


The Long Road Home

by ScribbleBoxFox



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Aftermath of Violence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Artificial Intelligence, Ass-Kicking, Attempted Murder, Cannon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Creepy-Ass Villains, Cybernetics, Cyborgs, Depression, Dissociation, Dogs, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Explosions, F/F, F/M, Flashbacks, Fluff and Angst, Frisbee Murder (don't ask), Healthy Coping Mechanisms, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Listen there are so many explosions it's not even funny ok, Lots of LGBT+ Characters, M/M, Major Character Injury, Mental Instability, PTSD, Panic Attacks, Platonic Cuddling, Platonic Relationships, Platonic Slow-Burn, Psychological Trauma, Redemption, Russian Roulette, So Many Space Dads, So much angst oh my god I'm so sorry, Space Battles, Space Flight, Torture, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, lot's of swearing, lots of blood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2018-10-02 01:27:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 25
Words: 329,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10205801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScribbleBoxFox/pseuds/ScribbleBoxFox
Summary: With The Staff of Charon a smoking-yet-functional speck on the horizon, and the threat of an active weapons system on one of Chorus' moons, the fight is far from over.  While Locus is no longer a threat, another one of Hargrove's former lackeys waits for the Reds and Blues as they race to stop the weapons system from coming online. Does she really want to help them? Or is she hiding a more sinister motive? And why is she so interested in Locus?!





	1. The Fall

And then there were eight; their ninth flickering out like a star being drawn into the belly of a black hole. Fragments of code skittering across a cyberspace plane. Glass from a window broken by the winds of a hurricane. Bravery is acting even when fear is present. But sometimes it isn’t enough.

They had learned this when Hargrove escaped two days ago in a burning ship that left a blood red trail in the sky behind it as it fell beyond the horizon of Chorus. The Reds and Blues had remarkably come away in mostly one piece. Mostly.

Tucker speculated on this as he made his way towards central command. Much had happened since the fight on _The Staff of Charon_. However, his injuries had kept him from most of the action, leaving him with only a vague idea of where everything stood.

“A cracked rib, a bullet wound in your side, a dislocated shoulder, and ten stitches in your head. Certainly not the best circumstances, but considering your odds, I’d say you turned out better than you could have,” Doctor Grey had told him when he first woke up. A week and a half, she had said. Approximately two-hundred and sixty-four hours. Tucker had counted every one. Yet the relief he had felt when he had finally been released had been hollow. The whispers of the medical staff and snippets of conversations he heard in the halls formed a ball of dread in the pit of his stomach.

Something about a station on one of Chorus’ moons that had been obscured due to its orbit. Information graciously given by one of the captured space pirates after a bit of gentle persuasion. Chatter heard in the locker room the day Tucker was officially allowed back in his power armor.

 _His_ power armor. Not the suit the Meta wore. Not the one he fought Charon in. Not the one _Church-_

Tucker shook his head. Remembered to breathe. Remembered where he was. _Kimball. Briefing. Right._ He rounded the corner and levelled his eyes with the doors at the end of the hall. Carolina was in there. The notion of that made his stomach churn. How was he supposed to face her after what had happened?

Tucker stopped just out of the range of the motion sensors of the sliding doors, head down. _Just go in there just get it over with just say you’re sorry and hope she doesn’t punch you._ Taking a deep breath, he straightened his back and entered the room. The Reds and Blues all turned to look at him when he entered, and the sudden attention only heightened his unease. They were gathered around a round table with holographic projections of topography hovering just above its shiny surface. Directly across it from where Tucker stood was Carolina.

“Tucker,” Kimball greeted him with a nod, and he noticed her standing beside the Freelancer, “good to see you back on your feet.”

He wanted to say something like “it doesn’t _feel_ good,” or “I’m glad I don’t have to lay in bed and stare at the clock on the wall and watch the hours tick by anymore,” but instead he stuck with “it’s good to be up and moving again.”

The others in the room all gave nods and murmurs of approval. Beside Kimball, Carolina shifted, tension in her shoulders. Tucker’s heart sank a little.

“Alright, let’s get to business. I’m sure you’ve all heard the chatter,” Kimball began. “Charon has established a base on the moon Nalome. Evidently it’s been there for years, but was ultimately harmless to us until just recently, when the weapons system that was put in place went online.” A thermal image of the moon appeared on the screen behind her. Several spots on its surface were bright red with readings and data in boxes beside them.

“The fact that Charon had a weapons system in place this whole time is alarming enough, but the fact that they plan on using it puts it as our top priority,” Kimball continued. “Your mission is to go to the moon, take out any enemy hostiles, deactivate and destroy the weapons system, salvage any useful information you can find, and return to base.”

“General Kimball, is it wise sending Tucker with us considering his recent injuries?” Wash spoke up.

“I’m fine,” Tucker said, surprising himself with his own snappy reply.

“Doctor Grey cleared him for duty, and considering the possibility of alien technology on the moon’s surface, it’s best that you bring him along,” Kimball replied evenly.

“Right,” Wash said, but sounded unhappy with her answer.

“If there are any more questions, comments, or concerns, now is the time to acknowledge them,” Kimball said, sounding less than inviting.

No one in the room spoke up, and she continued. “There’s a Condor being prepped for you to use as transport in the hangar. You will be provided with supplies enough to last you for two days. Use it wisely. All of your armor has been repaired since your fight on _The Staff of Charon_ , as have your weapons. Since we no longer have Epsilon to help us, you will be on your own as far as the technical aspects of the mission go. We will try to be in touch to assist you, but as of right now we are unsure of whether or not there will be radio interference once you land.”

“So we’re going into this blind?!” Simmons exclaimed. Beside him, Grif made a motion with his head like he was rolling his eyes.

“We’ve given you what information we have. I agree it’s not much, but it’s the best we have to work with at the moment,” Kimball replied.

“That doesn’t-”

“Oh lighten up. We went into _The Staff of Charon_ blind too and we turned out alright,” Grif said.

“We fucking lost _Church_ , we did _not_ turn out fine!” Tucker heard himself snap and immediately recoiled. All heads turned towards him and he suddenly wished he hadn’t said anything.

“He has a point,” Wash said with a sigh after allowing a short stretch of uncomfortable silence to settle in the room. “With what limited information we have, we’ll need to use extreme caution for this mission.”

“ _And_ extreme prejudice.” Tucker looked over as Carolina spoke up from Kimball’s side. “We can’t afford anymore losses. Especially after this last fight against Charon.”

“Copy that,” Wash said with a nod.

Kimball looked around, seeming to check to make sure no one else had anything they wanted to add before speaking again. “Wheels up in one hour. Use that time to get yourselves in the right frame of mind.” Tucker could feel her eyes on him; everyone’s eyes on him. He grit his teeth. “You’re all going to need clear heads in order for this mission to be successful. Dismissed.”

 

* * *

 

 

Being the last one in the room made it easy for him to also be the first one out. And that’s exactly what Tucker did. The moment they were dismissed, he stepped through the sliding doors, rounded the corner, and didn’t look back.

His head was swimming. He wasn’t sure if it was because he had strained himself too much when he had snapped at Grif, or if it had something to do with the exposure to Church’s fragmentation-

He felt himself pick up his pace and tried to remember how to breathe but his armor suddenly felt too tight and he had to fight the urge to try to pry his chestplate off without assistance. _Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Don’t-_

“Tucker!”

Tucker jumped and looked back when he heard his name called, and felt his shoulders sink when he saw it was Wash. He waited for the other Marine to catch up, realizing as an afterthought that he didn’t remember when he had stopped walking once Wash was finally at his side.

“What?” Tucker asked impatiently after a moment. He didn’t like the way the Freelancer was looking at him; like he was a tiger pacing in a cage instead of a person.

“I just...wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Tucker stared, and the feeling like his armor was constricting him returned and so he turned his head away. “I’m _fine_ , Wash. It’s just a fucking headache, okay?”

“You’re getting headaches?”

And Tucker suddenly found himself glaring back at Wash, with something like resentment climbing up his throat like bile. _Don’t pick me apart like I’m a fucking frog in some shitty science lab,_ he thought. “Dr. Grey said I would. I have meds for them. It’s _fine._ ”

“Tucker...Have you _talked_ to anyone about this?” Wash asked, and Tucker hated hated _hated_ the caution in his voice when he said it.

“I’m talking to _you_ right now,” Tucker replied.

“Look, I’m just asking because you’ve seemed pretty upset these past few days-”

“Upset? Wash? Fucking _upset?!_ My best friend is fucking _dead!_ He ripped himself to fucking shreds in the back of my _head!_ Church is fucking _gone,_ Wash! _Of course I’m fucking_ **_upset!_ ** _”_ Tucker snarled.

Wash stood his ground. “I _know_ ,” he said evenly. “And I’m sorry. And I...I know kind of what that feels like. Epsilon-”

“Tried to kill himself inside of your head. I _know_ ,” Tucker cut him off.

Wash squared his shoulders, and Tucker could see the tension starting to creep into his neck. “I’m just trying to _help_ ,” he said with forced calmness.

Tucker glared at him, wishing that he could find something else to say. Something to make him go away and never come back. Something to make him leave him alone. But the pain behind his eyes drove the fight away, and he felt his shoulders sag slightly as the adrenaline left his system. So he lowered his head and looked away and muttered out a guilty, “I know.”

A hand on his shoulder caught him off guard, and he looked back at Wash in surprise.

The Freelancer met his gaze for a moment, then dropped his hand back to his side and stepped back. “Look, I know I’m not….the _best_ at talking about...feelings and stuff.”

“No kidding,” Tucker said flatly, but noted how Wash’s body language didn’t change despite his comment.

“But I’ve been in a similar situation. And...I really did mean to come talk to you while you were in recovery. But I figured that you needed time to yourself to recover. I realize now that I should have been there for you. And I-” Wash sighed. “I’m sorry. And if you ever want to talk about what happened, I can listen.”

Tucker stared at him, mouth dry, not really sure what to say. So he sucked in a breath and swallowed hard and forced a laugh out. “Dude you are _such_ a ball of cheese.” And immediately felt bad when he saw the tension return to Wash’s shoulders, so he followed up with, “but I...really appreciate it.”

Wash relaxed and nodded. Then said, “I need to know that you can do this mission.”

Tucker recoiled, surprised. “Um, _yeah_ I can do this mission.”

“I’m only asking because-”

“Because you’re worried that I’m emotionally compromised. I get it. Look, really, I’m _fine._ ”

“Just not really, right?” Wash asked, and Tucker could _hear_ the eye roll in his voice.

He sighed. “I can do the mission, Wash. Everyone’s counting on me to anyways. And I’m not gonna let you guys go up there without me anyways. Besides, if I stayed here, Sarge wouldn’t let you hear the end of it. And I’d _hate_ for you to strain your voice going back and forth with him,” Tucker teased, starting down the hall towards the hangar.

“Yeah, yeah,” Wash said, keeping pace with him.

The two walked in silence for a while, listening to the ambient sounds of machinery, intercom announcements, and their own footsteps. When they reached the entrance to the hangar, Tucker stopped. Wash did too, looking back at him with a confused tilt of his head.

“What is it?”

Tucker sighed. “Carolina’s on this mission too.”

Wash tilted his head back in understanding. “You haven’t talked to her yet, have you?”

“She didn’t exactly come visit me in the medbay, Wash,” Tucker replied.

“I...was planning on talking to her later,” Wash said slowly. “Is this about Epsilon?”

“I just figured she’s gotta be pretty pissed at me for what happened, you know?”

Wash stared at Tucker incredulously. “Tucker, she doesn’t _blame_ you for what happened-”

“Neither of us have talked to her, so how would you know?”

“I-I _don’t_ ,” Wash admitted, “but Carolina’s not like that. She wouldn’t blame you for something that was beyond your control.” And when Tucker still looked unconvinced, added, “look, I’m going to talk to her on the flight over. Just...focus on _you_ for now, alright?”

“Got it,” Tucker said. Then, “dude, why are we here so early? We still have like twenty minutes until liftoff.”

“I was just following you,” Wash said dryly.

“Well, I’m gonna go get some grub,” Tucker declared after a moment of thought, then turned to head back the way they had come.

“Better hurry, Grif was headed that way too,” Wash told him, a smile in his voice.

Tucker froze mid-step and looked over his shoulder at the other marine. “God. Damnit.” He said, then took off in a run.

Wash watched him bolt around the corner with a slight chuckle, then a sigh as he turned back towards the hangar. Through the thick, sliding glass doors, he could see the Condor being prepped. He felt himself reach up and rub the back of his neck absently. And he stayed like that for a moment, listening to the white noise in the back of his head. _Focus_. He pushed the thought forward and shook himself back into the world, staring ahead. Self-consciously, he stole a glance around to see if anyone had noticed him. Then, realizing he was alone, sucked in a deep breath, and stepped into the hangar.

 

* * *

 

“Boss?”

“What is it, Wash?” Carolina asked, her eyes never leaving the control panel of the Condor. They had just cleared Chorus’ atmosphere. Estimated arrival time to Nalome was a little over thirty minutes. Plenty of time to think. At least, that’s what Carolina had _intended_ to use the space between then and now for. Wash, it would seem, had different plans.

 

 

“It’s about Epsilon.” Carolina noted the caution in her fellow Freelancer’s voice. The way his shoulders rounded slightly. How he wasn’t looking directly at her.

“What about him?” She narrowed her eyes behind her visor at her own tone, irritated that she hadn’t done more to restrain how impatient she sounded.

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“I’m fine,” Carolina said, fixing her attention on working the controls on her side.

“Tucker said the same thing.”

Carolina stopped. But only for a second. And if anyone but Wash had been observing her, they likely wouldn’t have noticed it. “I haven’t had a chance to speak with him,” she said, trying to push the conversation away from herself.

“I know.”

Carolina didn’t look at him. “What’s the problem?”

“We haven’t really had time to talk about what happened either.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Carolina said quickly. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched as Wash tilted his head slightly, and braced herself for whatever he was going to say next.

“It wasn’t your fault, you know. You- _we_ didn’t know what was happening with Epsilon. He didn’t _tell_ anyone-”

“Sharkface.”

“I’m...wait, _what?_ ”

“The first time I fought him, he called Epsilon a ‘failing AI’,” Carolina explained.

Wash was silent for a moment, and Carolina noted the way he bowed his head, like he was deep in thought.

“During that fight, he got overwhelmed and couldn’t run _any_ of my equipment,” she continued.

“You told me that,” Wash replied. “But you said that you just put too much strain on him. You never said-”

“I _know_ I never brought up what Sharkface said,” Carolina cut him off, exasperated, finally turning her head to look at him. “I didn’t think it mattered. Epsilon said that it was nothing. That he was just having…’performance issues’. I didn’t _know_ it was as bad as it was because he never _told_ me!”

Wash’s shoulders sank a little. “Jesus, Carolina…”

“So it _is_ my fault,” Carolina spat, looking back at the controls. “I knew he was in trouble, and I didn’t say anything. I just kept pushing.”

And when Wash had nothing to say to that, and looked back at his control panel, she couldn’t help but feel a little relieved.

The silence between the two of them stretched out longer than Carolina had anticipated, however. She found herself absently counting the minutes, her eyes wandering over the green-tinted surface of Nalome, drawing closer and closer.

“You shouldn’t blame yourself for what happened.”

Carolina closed her eyes and turned back to face Wash, fixing him in a tired stare she knew he couldn’t see. “Wash…”

“I’m serious!”

Carolina shook her head and looked back at the controls, beginning atmospheric entry procedures.She heard Wash sigh, then relay over comms to the Reds and Blues to prepare to for landing. She found herself glancing back at the door that separated the cockpit from the cabin.

“You mentioned Tucker,” she began.

Wash looked over at her. “Him and I talked about what happened,” he replied with a nod.

“I should speak with him,” Carolina said.

“You should,” Wash affirmed. “He said he was - hey, wait a minute. What’s that?”

Carolina followed his gaze out of the cockpit window and found herself staring at what appeared to be some sort of yellow _net_ made of light that covered the planet’s surface. It took her less than a second to realize what she was looking at. “Forcefield!” she cried. “Evasive maneuvers! Now!” She grabbed the control wheel and gave it a hard yank back, trying to pull up and away from the energy barrier.

“We’re caught in it’s gravity,” Wash reported, punching several buttons on his control panel. Right as the voice of the onboard AI said, _“integrity of secondary engines at seventy-five percent and dropping.”_

“Well get us _out!_ ” Carolina exclaimed, right as the door to the cabin slid open.

“Wash! What the hell is going _on!_ ” The voice sounded like it belonged to Tucker. Carolina didn’t care to check.

“The moon has a forcefield around it,” Wash replied, pulling up readings on his dashboard screen and cursing. “Carolina-”

_“Secondary engine malfunction imminent.”_

“Oh _shit-_ ”

“We’re getting pulled in!” Carolina exclaimed, pulling back on the control wheel with everything she had. “I can’t...I can’t _hold_ it! _Wash-!_ ”

“I _know!_ ” Wash shouted.

_“Atmospheric entry in T-minus five…”_

Carolina glanced up out the window, watching as the net of light drew relentlessly closer. “Wash, the _shields!_ ” she exclaimed.

_“Four…”_

“Everybody hold on!” Wash shouted, diverting the Condor’s remaining energy to powering its shields.

_“Three…”_

Out of the corner of her eye, Carolina saw Tucker brace against the doorframe.

_“Two...Integrity of primary engines dropping.”_

The frame of the ship rattled and groaned, and Carolina swore she could _hear_ the splutter of the failing engines.

_“One-”_

When Carolina was nine, a hurricane had struck land and ripped through the town she lived in. She remembered the way the storm gales shrieked against the metal shutters that covered her bedroom window. How the rain had beat against the roof. How the drains had emitted an awful buzzing roar when a tornado had ripped through the neighborhood several blocks over. And for a moment, the scream of metal against the energy field, and the howl of the engines found her huddled back in her parents’ tub with her favorite stuffed animal hugged against her chest and her father stroking her hair, telling her everything would be alright.

The vision only lasted a moment before Carolina shook herself back to reality and glanced down to make sure she was still holding the control wheel. It took her a second to process that none of the control panel’s lights were on.

“Shit, _shit!_ ” Wash hissed, trying all the buttons on his control panel.

There was a flicker of light and a rumble, then the alarms started, filling the cockpit with red light.

_“Structural integrity at forty-five percent.”_

Carolina took a deep breath and let go of the wheel, letting the ship freefall for a moment before she took control again and pulled up. This time, the ship did what she wanted it to. But the feeling of relief that bubbled in her chest only lasted for a second.

_“Primary engines offline.”_

“Guys?” Carolina saw Wash glance back at where Tucker was still hugging the doorframe.

“Tucker, sit down and buckle up!” Wash shouted.

Carolina never saw if Tucker did what he was told to or not. The cockpit was filled with mottled shadows as they dropped into the clouds. The ship shook as it cut through layer after layer of atmosphere. Carolina felt her heart drop into her stomach as the clouds sheared away and revealed the rocky surface of Nalome, rushing closer and closer. And she pulled up with everything she had, hearing the groan of the Condor’s wings as they strained under the friction of freefall.

_“Impact in six thousand meters.”_

“If I can get the primary engines back, I can slow our fall,” Wash said, panic edging his voice.

“What can I do?” Carolina shouted back.

“Just keep pulling up!”

_“Three thousand meters._

“I think….I think I almost got it!” Wash exclaimed.

“You _think?!_ ”

“Just a sec-”

_“Two thousand meters.”_

“Wash-”

“I know, I know! I just…” Wash hit a few more buttons on his control panel, then paused. “Uh. That’s not good.”

“ _What’s_ not good?!”

“If we’re going to get the engines back, we need to drop the shields.”

“Out _standing_.”

_“One thousand meters.”_

“Wash, tell me this will work,” Carolina said, looking over at him.

Wash stared back, hand hovering over the touchscreen on his control panel. He held her gaze for a moment, then nodded. “It’ll work.”

“Then do it.”

_“Seven hundred meters.”_

Wash hit the sequence to drop the shields. No more than a second later the onboard AI droned, _“Primary engines online.”_

Carolina hissed as the sudden thrust snapped her head forward. She held onto the control wheel tightly, ignoring the ache of her whiplash and watching with satisfaction as the ship began to pull out of freefall.

_“Structural integrity dropping.”_

“There was too much friction during entry. This is going to be an ugly landing,” Wash reported.

“Just keep her steady.”

_“Six hundred meters.”_

“We’re coming in too fast!” Wash exclaimed.

“Upward thrust is as good as it’s going to be, Wash!”

_“Four hundred meters.”_

The groan of the Condor’s shell set Carolina’s teeth on edge, and she watched as what appeared to be structures made of stone whipped past to the right.

_“Two hundred meters.”_

“Everybody hold onto something!” she heard Wash shriek.

The dashboard buzzed with alerts and the cockpit was flooded with red light as the ground rose up to meet the nose of the Condor.

Then there was nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hO MY GOD IT'S HAPPENING. Holy crap I'm writing a fic. This is real. This is happening. And I'm posting it online for the whole world to see oh Jesus Christ.
> 
> This is my first time really writing anything big so I'm sorry if it starts a little slow. But it'll only get better! The best way to improve is to do! Yeah! Positive vibes! Whoo! Also since I'm gonna also be illustrating this thing while writing it, it might take a little while to get chapters out. Usually I can bang out one illustration a day, but some chapters are going to have two, maybe even three if I feel ambitious. So I guess just bear that in mind. Really it's just an excuse to paint spacey stuff because I love space ok.
> 
> I'm gonna go eat ice cream and curl into a ball on the floor now bc I am anxious and scared but also glad this is finally happening.


	2. High And Dry

Tucker awoke to blaring sirens and flashing lights. He tried to move his head to get a look at his surroundings, but stopped with a sore groan when his neck locked up. _Great._ He squirmed a bit to try to right himself, but stopped when he felt the weight on his chest, and heard the warning creak of something just above him. He was stuck.

“Wash? Caboose? Holy fuck you guys better not be dead,” he panted into his comm, perking up when he heard something of a reply on the other end of the line. It was muffled and partially drowned out by static, but Tucker would have recognized that voice anywhere.

“Hey, Wash, you good?”

Wash’s voice was shrill when he replied, “no I'm not _good!_ What the _fuck_ just _happened?!_ ”

“Agent Washington! We're on the moon!” came Caboose’s voice; just loud enough for Tucker to quickly lower the volume on his comm in to avoid causing his ears to ring any more than they already were.

Tucker groaned, but couldn't help but feel relieved. Caboose was alright too. “Where are you guys? I can't see anything.”

“They're inside the wreckage of the ship! Where else, jackass?!” So Grif made it too.

“Tucker, I'm right above you. Don't move,” Wash said, right as Tucker got the bright idea to finally switch to thermal on his HUD.

“Yeah, I see that-” Tucker cut off with a gasp as the weight was lifted off his legs and chest and he could finally fucking _breathe_ again. He switched off thermals on his HUD and his vision was flooded with light. Blinking blearily as his visor adjusted its filters to the sunlight, he noticed Caboose off to his left yanking what appeared to be a part of the _wall_ away from him. To his right, Wash was crouching by his head, a slab of twisted steel in one hand that he had presumably pulled away from Tucker’s head so he could finally _see_ again.

Wash offered him his hand, and Tucker took it, letting himself get pulled to his feet. He stumbled a little, and Wash put a hand on his shoulder to steady him.

“I'm good,” Tucker said, waving him off. He forced himself to stand up straight, despite the smarting in his ribs, and get a good look around.

Their ship was just _wrecked_ ; reduced to a tangle of metal and wires and broken glass. One of the wings had been ripped clean off, and a little ways away he could see part of what had once been an engine. Past the billowing cloud of smoke that poured out of it, he could see Carolina walking through the debris with Sarge. One of his arms was slung over her shoulders, and he had a limp to his step that suggested a break.

Tucker startled slightly when Wash strode past him, heading towards Grif, who was currently pulling Simmons out from under part of what might have been the control panel while Donut stood by and offered words of encouragement.

“Agent Carolina!” Caboose yelled, causing Tucker to startle and stare at him as he ran past, “are you okay!?”

Tucker observed their interaction wearily, absently pressing his hand against his side to try to dull some of the pain. He watched as Carolina seemed to say something to Caboose off comms, then hand Sarge off to him before walking over to Wash. Grif had managed to get Simmons out into the open, and was patting the side of his helmet to try to get a response out of him. Noticing this, Tucker bit his lip and took a step towards them, then froze when he felt something bump up against the back of his helmet, immediately followed by a cold voice that commanded, “don’t move.”

Tucker sucked in a shaky breath. He didn’t remember that he was still broadcasting over comms until Carolina looked up at him sharply in response to this. Her gun was in her hands in seconds, and the warning she called out to everyone else drew their attention up the hill towards where Tucker stood with his unseen assailant.

“Let. Him. Go.” Carolina’s voice was pure venom when she spoke.

“First, tell me who you are and what business you have here, then we’ll see.”

Tucker swallowed hard, feeling dizzy, and hoped that Carolina would comply so he didn’t have to worry about the possibility of taking a bullet through the head any time soon.

Carolina exchanged a glance with Wash. Tucker couldn’t tell if she had switched to a private channel to talk to him or not. His vision was tinged black around the edges and little pinpricks of light danced in his peripherals. _Holy fuck you piece of shit don’t pass out they’ve got a gun to your head this is the_ **_worst_ ** _possible time to pass out don’t even_ **_think-_ **

“Let’s try this again, since you clearly didn’t hear me the _first_ time I asked; who are you, why are you here, who sent you, and who are you working for?” Whoever had a gun to his head was getting agitated, and it only made Tucker’s nausea worse.

“There’s no need for violence--”

“Are you going to answer my fucking questions or what? Look, I have a team of soldiers locked onto you as we speak. If you don’t give me some notion of who you are within the next thirty seconds, I’m blowing you all to hell.”

“Bow chicka- _ow!_ ” Tucker flinched as their gun prodded him hard in the back of his helmet.

“We came from Chorus,” Carolina said, her voice tight. “We got word of a Charon outpost here.”

There was silence from behind Tucker for a moment, and it made his skin crawl. He hoped that Carolina hadn’t given the wrong answer.

“So you’re not Charon, then?”

“Are you?” Wash asked.

“Answer the question, Stripes.”

Wash let out a sigh big enough to make his shoulders sink a little, then he spoke. “No, we’re not Charon.” Carolina shot him a glance as he said this, as if to ask what the hell he thought he was doing.

“Great. That’s just fucking great. I call for help again _three months ago,_ and instead of actual _Charon soldiers_ , I get a bunch of...what, you said you were from Chorus...so you’re a part of that shitty civil war they’ve got going on down there. _Perfect._ ”

“Great, another fucking merc!” It was Grif who spoke this time. Tucker looked over at him and couldn’t help but feel a little relieved when he saw that Simmons was sitting up beside him.

“So you work for Charon then?” Wash’s words were cautious.

There was a harsh laugh behind Tucker in response to that. “Oh, I’m sure Hargrove would tell you that if you asked him. But all things considered, if you want my personal opinion, he can go fuck himself.”

Tucker let out a sigh of relief when he felt the gun be removed from the back of his helmet. He stumbled forward a few steps before turning to look back at the person who had just seconds ago threatened to blow his head off. What he was met with was a figure with an alien looking helmet with two slashes across the front of it that _might_ have been a visor. The rest of their armor might have been Mark VI, but the way Tucker’s head was swimming, he couldn’t really tell.

“Call off your men,” Carolina said behind him. Tucker looked back , blinking in surprise when he saw that she was standing right next to him, gun aimed at the figure in front of him.

They tilted their helmet to one side, then threw their head back suddenly with a laugh. “Oh _man_ , I didn’t think that would fucking _work!_ It was a _bluff!_ I never had any guns trained on you guys! I’m the only one here!”

“ _What._ ” The disbelief in Carolina’s voice was entirely unfiltered.

“Yeah, yeah,” a dismissive hand wave, “the rest of the soldiers here died off a few years ago. I was the lucky one in the bunch. The name’s Fox, by the way.”

“Hey, are you guys done with your fucking tea party? Because _some_ of us could use a patch job,” Grif cut in.

Fox looked over at him smoothly, and Tucker wondered if they could really see out of those slits on their helmet, or if it was all cameras linked back to the HUD. “There’s an outpost I’ve occupied a few kilometers away. I’ve got a warthog, but I obviously can’t fit everyone in it. So whoever’s hurt the most can come back with me on that, and then I can ride back to get the rest of you once I’ve got them all situated.”

“I don’t think so,” Carolina growled.

“Smells like a trap!” Sarge called out. Tucker noticed that Donut had taken over Caboose’s position of holding him upright. “Leave it to a dirty Charon soldier to try to separate us so they can pick us off while we’re weak. Well I ain’t fallin for that!”

Fox let out a sigh. “Look, I’m not going to hurt any of you. Trust me, if I wanted you dead, I could have picked you off from the cliff while you were all still coming to from the crash.”

“Speaking of the crash,” Carolina said, an edge to her voice, “you wouldn’t happen to have had anything to _do_ with that, did you?”

Fox was silent for a moment, seeming to consider what they wanted to say. “Not directly. There’s an energy field held up by a network of cloaked satellites around Nalome that shuts down the engines of any ships that don’t carry a specific chip from Charon upon entry into the atmosphere. I helped them set it up back in the day, but that doesn’t mean I meant for you to crash.” They looked away. “I’ve been _trying_ to destroy it for months, but I’ve had no success.”

Carolina looked back at Wash, who shrugged. She turned back to Fox. “Fine,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“You can take our injured, but either myself or Wash is coming with you on the first run.”

Tucker never heard Fox’s response to Carolina’s proposition, as his knees locked suddenly, and the black that had been licking at the corners of his vision engulfed him completely.

 

* * *

 

Tucker came to with a jolt and immediately regretted opening his eyes when his vision was flooded with a sharp, bright light. “Jesusfuckingchrist,” he hissed, sheilding his eyes with his forearms. It took him only a moment to realize that his helmet was off. _What the-_

“Welcome back, Tucker.” Tucker looked over and noticed Wash sitting in a chair next to him. Tucker blinked and looked down at himself, realizing that he was laying on some sort of bed. Most of his armor had been stripped off, and when he moved, he could feel what felt like gauze pressing against his side underneath his kevlar suit.

“Where are we?” He asked finally.

“Fox brought us to the outpost she was talking about.”

“Wait, that was a chick?”

Wash stared at him a moment, then dropped his head into the palm of his hand. “Jesus Christ, Tucker.”

“What? You think I could tell with that freaky armor she had on? I mean, Christ, she looked like an alien or something!” Tucker paused, the gears in his brain turning. “Wait, how did you know she’s a girl?”

“I _asked._ ”

“Well did she take her helmet off or anything? Is she hot?”

“ _Tucker…_ ”

“What? You said that there’s another chick in here who _isn’t_ Carolina, you found out she’s a girl, and I’m asking you if she’s hot.”

“ _No_ , Tucker, she did not take her helmet off. In fact, she seemed pretty tense about having us around, which is why I’ve been down here with you since we brought you into the med bay-”

“Wait, you’ve been with me the whole time?” Tucker spluttered. “What, do you have a thing for me now, or-”

“I just want to make sure that my team members are functional, that’s _it,”_ Wash gritted out. But Tucker was willing to bet that under his helmet his face was bright red.

Tucker watched the other man for a moment, the amused grin on his face fading when he remembered that he wasn’t the only one who had been hurt. “Hey, is Simmons okay? He was knocked out, right?”

“He has a concussion, but he’ll live. Everyone else is just badly scratched and bruised, but no other major injuries. Carolina was able to right the Condor just before we crashed, so we landed on the hull instead of….whatever _might_ have happened,” Wash said. “I spoke to her, by the way,” he added after a short pause. “She...blames herself more than you. I think you two really should take some time to talk to one another once this is all over.”

Tucker frowned. “Yeah. Sure.” Then, “so this Fox chick, can we trust her?”

“I don’t know,” Wash admitted, but sounded somewhat guilty about it.

“She crashed our ship, right?”

“No, that was the forcefield. She hasn’t really been that chatty with us, honestly. I think she’s worried about us too. Which is why we need to be careful in dealing with her, because we don’t know what she’s been through, and we don’t know what she’s willing to do, either.”

Tucker tilted his head to the side. “You think she might try to fuck with us?”

Wash shook his head, then looked away. “I’m not sure. Even though she’s Charon, she doesn’t seem to have any love for Hargrove. That might be an advantage.” He looked back at Tucker. “Right now she’s giving everyone who was stable enough to walk a...tour...of the outpost.”

“Aww,” Tucker gushed, grinning mischievously, “and you chose to stay down here with me instead? You _sure_ you don’t have a thing for me, Wash?”

Wash sucked in a breath as Tucker chuckled under his breath, then he turned his head pointedly away and sighed, “just...shut up.”

 

* * *

 

The outpost was...accommodating enough, Carolina decided, despite much of it being in a state of disrepair. When she had arrived with Fox and the rest of the Reds and Blues, she had immediately noted the wretched state of the tall structure’s exterior. The metal paneling was heavily weathered and rusted, and overgrown with some type of moss, and several of the large satellites situated near the top of the outpost appeared to have suffered damage from a _heat source_ of some kind. The inside wasn’t much better, with rusted pipes winding across the ceiling and loose cables everywhere.

Yet despite its decaying state, the outpost appeared to be functional. This was something Carolina quickly came to realize when she had decided to wander off and map out the building. The walls still hummed with machinery, the doors slid open when she approached them, and occasionally she stumbled across a working server tower shoved in the corner of a dusty room somewhere. The only real consistency that she found that gave her some clue as to what the outpost had originally been used for were the words “ **The C.O.R.A. Experiment** ” printed on the surface of every supply crate she came across. Useful information to bring up with their gracious host at a later time.

Eventually, Carolina found herself in what appeared to be a control room for the outpost. She leaned back into the hallway she had come down to make sure she hadn’t been followed before holstering her pistol on her hip and stepping towards the screens mounted on the wall.

Carolina quickly pulled the system out of sleep mode, the monitors flickering on and filling the room with a blue glow. The request for a password filled the screen just above the keyboard she was using, and Carolina sucked in a breath and said, “Epsilon could you-”

_Oh._

It took Carolina moment to realize she was holding her breath, and she let it out between her teeth with a hiss. Epsilon was gone. _Stupid, stupid mistake, Carolina,_ she thought angrily, and stepped back from the screens, then froze when she saw the reflection of a figure standing in the doorway behind her in one of the dead monitors.

“Can I help you find something?”

Carolina turned slowly, hand on her pistol. Fox was leaning against the doorframe casually, like she hadn’t just caught her hovering over the keyboard in the control room. Carolina realized that she hadn’t even heard the other woman enter. She must have finished showing the others around, then come looking for her once she realized a member of the group was missing, Carolina realized.

“What’s ‘The C.O.R.A. Experiment?” She asked slowly.

“CORA,” Fox said. “We just called her CORA, for short.”

“Her?”

“She’s an AI,” Fox explained, and Carolina noted the tension in her voice when she said the word ‘AI’.

“You have an AI here?” Carolina asked, keeping her surprise out of her tone.

“ _Hargrove_ has an AI at _Station Alpha,_ a couple of miles away,” Fox replied. Then, “look, I can explain everything now, or we can wait until everyone’s patched up and ready to listen. The choice is yours, but I really don’t like repeating myself.”

“If it’s dangerous, then I need to know _now_.”

“It _is_ dangerous, actually. But not right now. She’s contained, and you’ve already crash-landed, so she can’t do anything else to you or your friends at the moment,” Fox said, standing up straight and crossing her arms.

Carolina stared at her incredulously. “An _AI_ caused us to crash?” she hissed. “You said it was a forcefield.”

“Held up and monitored by an _AI._ If the satellites orbiting around the moon don't read a chip, she fries your engines,” Fox explained. “She’s _real_ fun at parties.” She turned and motioned for Carolina to follow her.

Carolina did so, hesitantly, and kept her hand on her pistol as she walked with Fox down the hall.

“All the data you were not-so-discreetly trying to access is pretty much nothing but logs of all her activity, information about the little project Hargrove was running here, and a bunch of maps and whatnot that I made to figure out what regions of the moon I needed to _avoid_ to stay in CORA’s blindspot,” Fox said without looking at Carolina. “So far, I’ve figured out that in order to activate the sequence that will finally shut her down, a kill code that matches an algorithm specific to each of the other three outposts needs to be inserted into their respective command centers. From there, shutdown of all the facilities can be initiated, and CORA’s blind spot gets bigger.”

“And what happens from there?” Carolina asked slowly.

“Well, theoretically, we’d go to Station Alpha and insert the killcode for _her_ ,” Fox replied, looking back at her.

Carolina stared at her. Despite the endless stream of thoughts running through her mind, she could think of nothing to say to the other woman.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Fox continued. “That I’m just going to use you guys to get off of this stupid rock. But truth is, _none_ of us are getting out of here unless _she’s_ dead.”

“And you know that _how?_ ” Carolina asked.

Fox chuckled. “Honey, do you really think I’ve just been sitting around here twiddling my thumbs for four years?” she asked, leading Carolina through a sliding door at the end of the hall and into what might have been a loading bay at some point. “I _tried._ Nearly got me killed,” Fox explained, stopping and looking back at Carolina with a nod. “And in the shape some of your friends are in, I don’t think they’d be that lucky.”

“So what now, then?” Carolina asked, trying to keep the impatience out of her voice.

“Now we wait until your teammates are healed up, and then we figure out a plan of action,” Fox said. “I’ll let you know when it’s time.” She then turned and walked away, leaving Carolina alone once again with far more questions than she had answers.

 

* * *

 

Climbing a mountain a week or so after having a space ship dropped on you is not something most medical practitioners would generally advise. However, Locus had neither the time, nor resources to worry about something as trivial as that. He had an objective; kill all seven in a band of space pirates camped out in the valley below, acquire their ship and potentially some medical supplies, leave Chorus, find help, stop Hargrove.

It was clockwork. And the way in which he picked off each pirate was almost mechanical.

It was dark by the time he made his way back down the mountain; his progress hindered by numerous injuries, the most prominent of which produced a noticeable limp on his right side. He did his best to hide it, even when he knew no one was watching.

There were little medical supplies to be found. A few tubes of biofoam, a suturing kit, and some gauze was the best he was able to scavenge. The biofoam was the only thing of any real use, however he held onto the rest of it, just in case.

The ship was a Condor. It wasn’t in the best of shape, with a scratched up hull and several bullet holes in one of the secondary thrusters. But it would fly, and that’s all that mattered. Though the slipspace drive was on its last legs, Locus determined that it was good enough for one more jump. That’s all he would need.

Sleep didn't welcome him that night, and he soon found himself watching as the sun's orange glow rose faintly on the horizon. Much of the night had been spent tending to what wounds he hadn't immediately taken care of after the fight with the Freelancers. The pain was manageable, mostly; the painkillers from his power suit made it bearable at least. Though Locus was very much aware that he wouldn't last long in a real fight if he didn't get professional medical attention soon.

He tried to ignore his injuries as much as possible while prepping the ship, focusing instead on plotting a course to the nearest colony planet within the same system as Chorus. Upon a quick scan of a map of the solar system, Locus found one planet of interest; one the Charon ship had passed when it brought him and Felix-

 _No. It’s over. You had no choice. Keep moving,_ he thought, growing suddenly conscious of how his shoulders had stiffened at the thought of his former partner. He quickly pre-programmed the coordinates into the ship’s autopilot, then went through the motions of preparing for takeoff. The sooner he was off this planet, the sooner he could leave everything that had happened behind him.

 

* * *

 

Takeoff was surprisingly smooth; Locus managed to impress himself with his handling. The course he had plotted would take him past one of Chorus’s moons. He would have to get uncomfortably close to it, but with _The Staff of Charon_ looming in nearby open space, it was his best chance at avoiding detection.

Locus watched wearily as the surface of the moon drew closer, it’s green and grey-dappled form looming like a spherical monolith emerging from the black expanse of space. He maneuvered the ship carefully into the moon's gravitational field, keeping a close eye on fuel levels as he did so. Prior to takeoff, he had calculated the distance the Condor could travel with its current fuel levels, and had determined the best course of action was to utilize the moon’s gravity to slingshot the Condor into deep space with minimal fuel usage. It was a flawless plan.

Almost.

Karma was a bitch in the shape of a big yellow forcefield, Locus soon realized, as the barrier appeared suddenly on the starboard side of the ship and the warning alarms indicating the failure of the ship’s engines blared overhead. And as he struggled to fight the moon’s gravity and compensate for the engine failure, a part of him realized redemption had never been within reach. And as the onboard AI informed him of the ship’s imminent impact, a wave of bitterness rose up into his throat because he had been so _close_. So close to leaving it all behind and starting anew and maybe one day fixing the damage he had done.

And as the secondary engines finally failed and the integrity of the primary engines dropped, leaving him with nothing but a shield to defend against the friction of atmospheric entry, that bitterness settled into something cold and heavy at the bottom of Locus’ stomach. He deserved this. Hundreds, _thousands_ of lives ruined because of him, all for nothing. All because he had been so _blind_ . Because he couldn’t face the _truth._

And the wind whipped around the metal _coffin_ he had sealed himself in; an ironic addition to the grave he had dug himself into. And the roar of the friction battering against the ship’s shield crescendoed. And Locus held onto the control wheel and watched as the clouds cut past and revealed the rocky surface below. And he listened as the AI announced the failure of the primary engines and begin the countdown to impact with the iron-flavored taste of acceptance on his tongue.

 _How fitting_ , he thought as the Condor pitched downwards and the ground rose up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy smokes this chapter was LONG. I should probably start by saying that Fox isn’t a self-insert. I know the whole “ScribbleBoxFox” username thing might be off-putting, but really, I just love foxes, fam. Fox was originally an Okami OC, believe it or not. She was a Tube Fox that said “fuck that” to Lord Ninetails and decided to become Ammy’s bff, but wound up dying when they fought her boss. Then Ammy was sad and made her into like...a trickster god or something?? I don’t really remember, but I know that whatever it was didn’t constitute giving her a cool disc like Ammy had. But I wanted her to have one so she got one anyways. I redrew what I remember she used to look like (back before my old 7th grader sketchbooks were lost to the sands of time and my parent’s attic), and I'll probably post it on my tumblr (username is also ScribbleBoxFox, if you're wondering) later tonight. Her name was also “Kitsune” because “Okami” means “wolf” in Japanese, and I thought I was being clever. I wasn’t, but I’m also too lazy to change her name AND PLUS I LIKE IT A LOT FOR OBVIOUS REASONS OK. 
> 
> K now that’s out of the way so I can ramble a bit more. Uh this chapter was long. Next chapter I’m gonna probably use “Exposition-no-Jutsu” on you guys because tbh as much as I would love to stretch out each chapter for the sake of sticking to that “show, don’t tell” rule, this fic is already planned out to be SUPER long and there’s literally no room anywhere else for all that crap. Anyways, I’m done now. Hope you liked the chapter!


	3. Out of The Fry Pan...

Wash had just left the med bay when the alarms started. He froze, hand reaching for his gun instinctively.

“What the _fuck_ is that?” Wash looked over his shoulder at Tucker, who had insisted on walking up with him after proving he could stand on his own just minutes ago.

“I don’t know,” Wash said, his voice heavy with tension. Then, “stay close. We need to find Fox and the others and figure out what’s going on.”

They found Carolina before they found Fox; running into her on the ground level along with Caboose and the Reds. Apparently they’d all had the same sense to gather together at the first sign of danger. It almost, _almost_ brought a smile to Tucker’s face.

“Agent Washington! Tucker! The walls are _yelling!_ ” Caboose exclaimed when he saw them.

“It’s okay, Caboose. They’re just alarms,” Wash sighed, walking past him to reach Carolina.

“I _knew_ we couldn’t trust that good-for-nothin’ space pirate!” Sarge growled, swinging his shotgun around.

“We don’t even know what the alarms are _for_ ,” Grif huffed.

“They’re to signal a ship entering the atmosphere of the moon,” a new voice said.

Tucker turned and stared as Fox approached them. She hit something on the data pad in her hand and the alarms cut off suddenly.

“Another ship? That’s impossible. Kimball didn’t send anyone else!” Carolina exclaimed.

Fox stopped short of her and tilted her head to the side in thought. “Maybe this ‘Kimball’ of yours didn’t tell you everything you needed to know.”

Carolina shook her head. “You’re wrong. You don’t know her. She’s trustworthy. If she said she was only sending us, then that’s what she did.”

Fox held her gaze evenly for a moment, then shrugged. “If you say so. Though I have to ask, how many Condors does she have in her airfleet?”

“She _had_ one,” Simmons muttered.

Fox looked over at him, then turned the data pad over in her hands so everyone could see what was on the screen; a frozen image of a Condor caught in the moon’s energy field.

Wash shook his head. “That’s not one of ours,” he said. Tucker glanced over at him when he heard the tension in his tone.

“Well, whoever it belongs to, they’re currently a few seconds from impact,” Fox explained, tapping her finger against a timer in the top right corner of the screen counting down. “I’ve already calculated their trajectory and figured out where they’re going to land, so I’m heading out to go find the wreckage and see if there are any survivors,” she said, tucking the data pad under her arm. “There are quarters in the east wing of the outpost, by the way, if you guys wanna get yourselves situated,” she added, looking back at them.

“I can’t let you go out there by yourself,” Wash said suddenly, stepping towards her.

Fox looked back at him and seemed to size him up before speaking. “I can handle myself,” she said.

“You don’t know what’s out there. You got lucky with us, but whoever’s on that ship might not be as friendly as we were,” Wash said. And Tucker noticed the sudden quiet that had fallen over the group, and wondered if they were all thinking of the same person.

“Then _come with me_ ,” Fox sighed exasperatedly. “I don’t have all night. The ship just crashed, and the longer we wait, the less likely we’ll be to find anyone alive.” With that, she turned and started towards the garage.

Wash glanced back at Carolina, who sighed and gave him a nod. “We’ll take care of things here. You be careful, understand?”

“Sure thing, boss,” Wash replied, then hurried after Fox.

Tucker watched him go, worry wrapping around his stomach like an icy constrictor. But the feeling was disrupted when Carolina said, “alright, let’s go settle in. We don’t know how long we’ll be here,” before starting off in the opposite direction.

“Dibs on top bunk,” Grif said flatly as he walked past.

“What?! Aw come on!” Simmons groaned, following him.

“Oh, be a good sport, Simmons!” Donut piped up cheerfully. “We both know you like to be on the bottom!”

“Make all the dibs you want, Grif, but we all know the bottom’s where you belong!” Sarge barked, eliciting a snigger from Donut.

“Can I have top bunk, Tucker?” Caboose whispered.

Tucker sighed, but a smile crept onto his face as he said, “sure, Caboose. Let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

Black. That was the first thing Locus saw when he opened his eyes. He was vaguely aware of sirens blaring from somewhere behind him, but trying to turn his head to see where they were coming from resulted in more pain than he had it in him to deal with at the moment.

He felt something warm slide down his forehead, and he reached up to swipe it out of his eyes, but paused when his hand hit metal and remembered that he still had his helmet on. He blinked several times to try to clear his vision, and felt his heart sink when he saw the warnings flashing across his HUD.

Locus closed his eyes again and tried to focus on breathing. When he opened them again, he found himself staring past his HUD, upwards. He could see stars, he realized, and a part of him couldn't help but feel a little relieved. Groaning with the effort, he tried to drag himself upright, only to fall back with a strangled gasp when a sharp pain cut through his side. He tasted iron and wondered if he bit his tongue, or if it was indicative of a much deeper injury.

With a grating sigh, he closed his eyes again, trying to convince himself that the pain he was in wasn’t as bad as he thought it was. That he wasn’t probably bleeding out in the wreckage of his ship. That he didn’t probably have a punctured lung. These convictions became less and less feasible as the numbing static in the back of his head began to take over his thoughts. He told himself to keep breathing, to stay awake, to _fight_ , but in the back of his head the doubt had already set in.

A sensation on the side of his head just then drew him back into the world, if only slightly. He cracked his eyes open, confused, trying to place exactly what he was looking at. On the screen of his HUD, he could see two blue slash marks where there had been nothing but stars before. Whatever it was that was in front of him now had his attention. He tried to move back with a gasp, but found himself hissing in pain and pressing a hand to his side. When he pulled it away, in the dim lightning, he could see it was wet with blood.

The blue slashes above him moved, and it occurred to him that someone was _speaking_ to him. The voice was soft and gentle, but had a tone of urgency to it. He couldn’t quite make out the words; they were just beyond his muddled mind’s grasp of understanding, but they were there.

Suddenly there was a pinch in his side, and something changed and he could _hear_ again. And this time, when the voice spoke, he could _understand_.

“Hey, hey, listen to me. You’re hurt real bad, okay. Try not to move. I’ve got- look, I’ve got a friend coming and he’ll help, alright. I just need you to stay with me, okay? Keep breathing. You’re gonna be okay.”

It occurred to Locus that whoever was crouching over him was also holding his head straight; typical procedure for handling anyone who had potential spinal damage. At the very least it explained why everything hurt so much.

He wanted to say something, to ask what was going on, to ask this stranger who they were, but before he could muster the strength to do so, a new, familiar voice rang out.

“Fox, holy shit, get away from him! He’s dangerous!”

 _Agent Washington_ , Locus thought with exasperation.

“Oh yeah, _real_ dangerous.” Locus could _hear_ the eyeroll in Fox’s voice. “Yeah I’m so fucking terrified of the guy who just nosedived into a goddamned _moon_.”

“Listen to me, this guy is fucking insane and I _promise_ he’s not going to repay any sort of kindness you try showing him, so just…”

“What? You want me to just _leave_ him? No way.” Fox’s voice was a frost-edged blade. “Listen, Stripes, this is _my_ moon, _my_ operation, and so help me _god_ it is _my_ call as to what we’re going to do with this guy. I’ve been stuck up here with literally fucking no one but an AI to keep me company, and because of that I’ve had very little chance to do right by anybody.”

Wash started to speak up, but Fox cut him off. “Which means that we’re going to take him back, get him _help_ , and then, when he’s _not_ bleeding all over the place, we can have a talk with him and see what’s up. _Do I make myself clear?_ ”

Locus didn’t hear anything from Wash for a few seconds, and that made the back of his mind crawl with worry.

“Fine.” Wash hissed the word out between his teeth, and from Locus’ limited range of view, he could see the Freelancer storm off. “I’m going to get the warthog,” Wash shouted back as he walked away.

“That’ll be the first sensible thing you’ve done since you got here,” Fox muttered. She then looked back at Locus, tilting her head to the side. “Hey, you’re still awake, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” His voice sounded like he had tried gargling nails, but it was the best Locus could do.

“Okay, listen. I filled the cut in your side with biofoam. It _should_ hold, but I need you to try to avoid moving as much as possible just in case it doesn’t.”

Her voice was starting to sound distant, and Locus had to resist the urge to shake his head to try to clear the fog that was settling behind his eyes. He tried to speak again, but only managed a garbled cough.

“Hey, look, don’t talk, okay? I just need you to focus on breathing for me, alright? You’re going to be fine.” Her voice was urgent, but Locus found himself slipping further and further away from it with every breath.

 _So much for making things right,_ he thought bitterly before darkness overwhelmed his vision. Then there was nothing.

 

* * *

 

White. Locus regretted opening his eyes and shut them immediately against the overhead glare. It took him a moment to muster the energy to open them again, but once he did, he forced himself to look around. He was in a white room with nothing in it save for the bed he was laying on. The wall he was facing was made of glass, and through it he could see that he was on a hall lined with more rooms like the one he was in. He narrowed his eyes when he realized he was in some sort of holding cell. It didn't make much sense, considering whoever put him in here didn't bother to remove his armor.

He bit his lip as he tried to sit up. It didn't hurt that much, but he was still remarkably sore from... whatever had happened to him. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stared at the floor, an arm wrapped absently around his middle.

He wasn't dead. He tried to rationalize this. He remembered feeling panic, which meant that whatever had happened must have been bad. Frustrated, Locus squeezed his eyes shut, trying to remember. He was startled into opening them when he heard the sound of a door sliding open.

“Well hey there, Sunshine! Glad to see you're alright. You had me worried for a while there,” an unfamiliar soldier chimed in an unfamiliar voice as she stepped inside the room. The glass panel Locus had initially believed to be a wall slid back into place behind her.

Locus peered at her, swearing he had seen the armor she was wearing somewhere before. “Who are you?” He asked slowly after a moment. “And where am I?”

The soldier tilted her head to the side. “Huh,” she said, sounding a little disappointed, “guess I should have expected that. You _did_ get hit on the head pretty hard back there.” She leaned her shoulder against the wall, crossing her arms. “The name's Fox, by the way. And you're on Nalome, one of Chorus's moons. Do you remember how you got here?”

Locus looked back down at the floor, his head swimming. His first thought was that Chorus had managed to crash his ship, but it didn't make sense. There was certainly no way Kimball could have known he was trying to leave the planet. There was a chance that Charon might have learned of his betrayal, but he doubted that Hargrove knew he was still alive after all that had happened. It occurred to him that he still hadn’t answered the question. “I...My ship went down.”

“Yep. Remember anything else?”

There was something about her that he swore he recognized, and Locus wondered if maybe she wasn’t entirely unfamiliar after all. “You were there, weren’t you?”

“At the crash site? Yeah. I pulled you out.” Fox nodded. “You were in pretty bad shape when I got to you. Broken rib, a concussion, some internal, and external, bleeding. Fixed you up with some biofoam and a healing unit. Which is still running. The healing unit, I mean.” She pushed off the wall and rolled her shoulders before straightening up. “You’ve been out for almost twenty-two hours now. I would’ve gotten you out of that armor to make you more comfortable if it wasn’t for the fact that...well...frankly speaking, you’re not too popular with the peanut gallery upstairs. Figured it would give them a harder time in case they tried something.”

No. Right. That’s right. Agent Washington had been there. He remembered now. He had warned Fox to stay away from him. Told her that he was dangerous. So why… “Why did you help me when Agent Washington warned you not to?” Locus asked, looking up at her again.

Fox perked up at that. “Oh, so you know them _too_ . Was wondering if this was just a one-way sort of thing.” She scuffed at the floor absently with a heel. “And I saved you because...well...I couldn’t just _leave_ you there, y’know?”

 _No, I don’t know_ , he wanted to say back. It didn’t make sense in his head that someone would help another person that they knew could possibly do them harm later. But instead, he said, “You should have listened to Agent Washington.”

Fox’s shoulders went stiff, and then she put both her hands on her hips and centered her weight. “Okay, look. You can pull your little pity party tugboat for as long as you fucking like, _or_ you can cut the angsty Dorian Grey bullshit and actually _thank_ me for not letting you bleed out.” She sucked in a breath, then let it out slowly. “Look, those guys up there have been saying stuff about you all day. However, _I_ don’t know you. Not really. I did a little digging and was able to pull your file. I know what you can do. And I know what you’ve done. But that doesn’t tell me jack shit about what you’re _going_ to do. You might have had a rough start, but what you’ve got, you can build on.”

Locus blinked. How her naivety hadn’t gotten her killed by this point was beyond him. “What you read in my _file_ tells you nothing about me,” he warned.

“True, which is why I talked to the Sim Troopers and the Freelancer dynamic duo up there. Some of their anecdotes were...insightful. From what I can tell, you’ve been the puppet of some pretty terrible people as of late. So...not everything that was done was _necessarily_ your fault. Your poor judgement and lack of a moral compass for sure was, though.” She shrugged. “All I’ve got to say on the matter is this; if you were really the murderous nutcase that they told me you were, you’d’ve _probably_ already tried to kill me by now.”

Locus felt the hackles on the back of his neck rise. “Don’t call me that,” he growled.

“Oh. Yikes, sorry. Sort of slipped out. Noted. Won’t do that again. Pinkie promise and all that.” Fox rounded her shoulders guiltily. She shuffled her feet awkwardly, and Locus got the sense that she wanted to say more, but didn't.

“You mentioned Sim Troopers. How many?”

Fox perked up slightly, and inhaled like she was going to answer, but cut off and looked sharply back over her shoulder. Her sudden silence sparked a newfound wariness in Locus, and he held his breath and listened, becoming aware of the unmistakable sound of hurried footsteps down the hall coming towards them. He looked over as Fox leaned back to get a better angle to see whoever was approaching.

“Simmons, is that you?” Fox called out, irritation apparent in her tone.

“Y-yeah, Fox, sorry. Carolina asked me to find you. She says she has a question about the- _Oh shit he's awake!_ ” Simmons froze on the other side of the glass, staring at Locus.

“Really? _Gosh_ , I hadn't _noticed!_ ” Fox exclaimed.

“Wh- what are you doing in there?! We need to get you _out_ he could _kill-”_

“Yeah, see, I'm gonna stop you right there,” Fox said, holding up a hand. “He's not going to hurt me, because frankly, it'll only do him more damage to try. And I can leave whenever I want because I've been bioscanned into the system as an administrator. So don't worry.”

Simmons over at her then glanced nervously back at Locus. “Wash said to let him and Carolina know when he wakes up,” he said lamely.

“I heard. Figured I'd talk to him first to get a handle on how he's holding up. Since, y’know, he crashed,” Fox replied. “Now if you’ll be a dear, please run up and tell the dynamic duo that their friend here is _not_ ready to be interrogated, since he’s still recovering from having a hole punched into his side.”

“I-I can’t just leave you alone with him! Wash will kill me!”

Fox was very silent and very still for a moment, then spoke up in a tone that reminded Locus of the one Doctor Grey liked to use when someone was really getting on her nerves. “Simmons, do you know what a thousand pounds of torque does to a human neck?”

“I'm gonna go find Wash,” Simmons said quickly, starting back down the hall.

“If Wash comes down here, I’m going to kill both of you!” Fox shouted after him. After a moment, she looked back at Locus. “Sorry about all that.”

But Locus didn’t hear her. Under his helmet his eyes were squeezed shut and he had tightened his arm around his waist involuntarily. _Just focus on your breathing. Just breath,_ he told himself, growing more and more frustrated at the lack of control he had over his own body. _It’s just an interrogation. You’ve been through this before._ But before, he was one of two who crawled out of the wreckage after a battle destroyed his platoon; sitting in a metal chair in a cold room with a man with a forgettable face demanding to know how they survived when the others fell. Before he was a _soldier._ Before, he wasn’t a _monster. H_ ow could he face any of the Sim Troopers or Freelancers or _Kimball_ after what he-

Locus was jolted out of his thoughts when he felt something brush against his arm and he flinched backwards, body tensed for a fight. When he came to his senses he realized that Fox was standing in front of him, her hand outstretched, and he realized that she must have simply been trying to get his attention.

“Hey, look at me. You’re okay, alright?”

He stared at her, anger slowly creeping over him because he _had_ to have made it obvious that he wasn’t mentally present. _Careless mistake,_ he told himself. _You can’t trust her. You can’t trust any of them. Stop letting your guard down and_ **_focus_ ** _._ He took a deep breath, gritting out an “I’m fine,” before turning his head away.

“No, you’re not. You looked like you were about to pass out there for a second.”

“I wasn’t-”

“And you still kind of do. Look, it’s _okay_ . I’m not going to let them interrogate you until you’re ready.” Fox stepped back and let her hand drop back to her side. “You're safe here. I know you probably don't really believe that, but I wouldn't say it unless it was true.” She looked away. “I'm going to go find Wash before he comes looking for me.” She glanced back at him. “You can reach me on _ShowStopper90._ It's a private channel. Just radio if you need me.”

She turned, and Locus watched as she walked out of the room and down the hall, the glass door sliding shut behind her and leaving him in silence.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> K so I forgot my chapter order and said last chapter that this chapter would be an "exposition-no-jutsu" chapter. Yeah that happens next chapter. Whoops. 
> 
> Tucker you need to get your eyes checked, that is very clearly not a Mark VI chest plate. In his defense he was woozy was fuck. Poor guy. Don't worry, he'll be fine.
> 
> Also gonna take the time here real fast to tell you all that Fox is SHORT. Like 5'2". She's a gremlin. A gremlin telling off a murder machine who probably has around a full foot of height on her. A very RESOURCEFUL gremlin who knows her way around a computer well enough to get information on randos and hardwire a whole outpost's alarm systems to let her know when some dipshit decides to crash land on her moon. Yet she still doesn't have the sense to not lock herself in a room with a guy who's killed more people than she's probs ever met in her life. I didn't raise her like this, I swear.
> 
> Also also, I've always wondered how Locus' superiors reacted to finding out him and Felix managed to survive whatever the hell happened to them. I imagine they weren't too happy. Probably thought they deserted or something. Whatever happened, I can't imagine the outcome was particularly nice for either of them. 
> 
> Poor Wash puts up with so much shit. "No Fox, you can't keep him- goddamnit."


	4. ...Into The Lava

Agent Washington’s headache started when Simmons gave him the news about Locus. When Fox came in shortly after, it only got worse.

“I said _immediately_ , Fox,” he sighed when she approached him in the command center, where he and Carolina had gathered after news of Locus’ arrival at the outpost had been delivered.

“Ten minutes,” Fox said, stopping a few feet away from him. “I was only talking to him for ten minutes. Speaking of which;” she shifted her weight and put her hand on her hip, “he’s in no condition for you lot to go down there and interrogate him. Fella nearly passed out mid-conversation. He’s still got a ways to go.”

“We don’t have time to wait for him to feel better.” Wash looked over his shoulder as Carolina spoke up, not looking away from the schematics she had pulled up on one of the monitors.

“She’s right,” Wash said, looking back at Fox. “Every second that passes without us talking to him gives him time to try to escape.”

Fox stared at him incredulously, then threw back her head in a laugh. _Now_ Carolina was looking at her. “Escape? Jesus, Stripes. _Where?!_ Where is he going to go? He can’t leave. The energy field around Nalome makes escaping it’s atmosphere impossible!”

“Who’s to say he won’t try to find the source of the field and destroy it?” Carolina asked, stepping away from the monitor and walking over to join Wash at his side.

“Well, number one, if he did find it - which would take very little effort on his part, I should add - he’d have to get CORA to cooperate. And number two, she won’t cooperate. She’ll fucking kill him,” Fox huffed.

Carolina and Wash exchanged a glance. By now, news of the AI had spread as well, and this was the second time Fox had brought it up, but so far, she hadn’t elaborated much on the topic, and the notion that it would try to kill anyone made them both uneasy.

“Why on earth would she want to kill anyone?” Carolina asked slowly.

Fox stared at her a moment, then crossed her arms. “Right. No I never...told you guys what happened to my team, did I? Never had the time. Look,” she turned her head towards Carolina, “why don’t we get the others in here so they can all hear this?”

“Locus stays put,” Wash said warningly.

Fox nodded at him. “Fine.”

 

* * *

 

Tucker thumbed the exhaustion from his eyes as he made his way to the control room with Caboose in tow. He could hear bickering up ahead, which had to mean that the Reds had responded to Fox summoning them over the intercom faster- something Tucker was sure Sarge wasn't going to let them hear the end of. Behind him, he could hear Caboose yammering on about something cute that Freckles did.

Tucker wished he could just curl up somewhere and sleep, but Fox's voice had sounded urgent, and he knew that Wash would only yell at him for being absent.

He lowered his gaze towards the floor as he and Caboose stepped into the control room. The overhead lights were bright, and it was easier to just stare at the concrete.

“There y’ are, Blues! I was wondering if you two lowlifes were ever gonna show. If you had half the wit of a Red, you’d’ve been here hours ago!” Sarge gloated when they entered the room.

“You realize I made the announcement over the intercom less than ten minutes ago, right?” Fox asked. She was standing behind a large round table with a dark glass surface with her back to the rows of monitors that covered the walls, Tucker observed. On either side of her were Wash and Carolina.

“Every second that passes gives the enemy time to scheme against us!” Sarge declared. Tucker blinked when he caught the meaningful stare Carolina fixed Fox with.

Fox simply sighed and tapped the surface of the table. There was a flicker of blue light from beneath the glass and then a series of holograms projected above it. Fox flicked a few of them aside before enlarging one in the center. Tucker realized he was staring at a 3D projection of the moon. On top of the spiderwebs of light that made up the planetoid were several blinking green dots.

Fox looked around at everyone before speaking. “About six years ago I was sent here by Charon to research the alien technology on Chorus. We were meant to be _on_ Chorus, but due to the…’unstable political situation’...tied with the fact that most of us were only researchers with no real combat experience, we wound up here. The purpose of our mission was to understand the tech on Chorus, and figure out a way to make some of it useful. At the time when I was hired by Charon, I was working closely with a man named Howard Manning; a biotics engineer. They hired me because they wanted to find a way to make biotics that could be weaponized with the same kind of plasma energy that the Sangheili use for their swords. So that way if a soldier was hurt in combat, they would not only return to the field with full mobility, but they would also be far more dangerous than they were before.

“Let me be clear; I wasn’t on board with the idea of ‘weaponizing’ biotics. Like my mentor, I believe that any prosthetics given to a patient should work just as well as the original limb, but not be any better than it was before. Mostly because giving someone say...a laser arm...and then expecting them to be able to go about having a normal life after discharging them is...unconventional. That’s where the trouble with Hargrove began.

“He didn’t take too kindly to my personal beliefs, nor did he like the fact that many of my colleagues agreed with them. So he sent down an AI to ‘help us stay our course,’ so to speak.” Fox sighed, and she fell silent for a moment before continuing. “Her name was C.O.R.A. It stood for Charon Outpost Regulation AI. She was supposed to monitor our work here and help us run the outposts and main station. Unfortunately for Hargrove, she seemed to like us a lot more than she liked him.”

Tucker watched with a mixture of fascination and concern as Fox appeared to shrink as she spoke. “Hargrove didn’t like that. He sent us a package containing a drive with new code for her to make her...more cooperative. He said that it would help her help us even more. And at the time we were stretched so thin with our resources and supplies that we didn’t really have a choice but to implement the code.”

Fox lowered her head to stare at the glass surface of the table instead of the soldiers around her. “That’s when things turned ugly,” she said softly. “CORA began acting differently. Whenever someone didn’t follow Hargrove’s _exact_ orders, she would find a way to make them pay for it. By the time I realized what was happening, it was already too late. She had holed herself up in Station Alpha and we couldn’t reach her. And I tried to tell my team to just leave it alone, but they were so determined to get off of Nalome. They wanted to go home. If only they hadn’t tried to shut her down, maybe CORA…”

Fox looked up at all of them and took a deep breath before speaking again. “They attacked Station Alpha. CORA caused an explosion and trapped them. She said that they were ‘liabilities to the mission’.” She spat the words out bitterly. “The only reason she didn’t kill me too was because I was the commander in charge and therefore ‘vital to the success of the mission’. I’ve been trying ever since to find a way to break her code so I can get off this miserable rock and hunt Hargrove down. And now that you’re all here, I might finally have a chance to do that.”

No one spoke for a moment. Tucker found himself staring at the floor, mulling over what he had just been told. He looked up when he heard Wash speak.

“Where’s the AI now?” Tucker wondered if Wash was thinking of Epsilon when he asked this.

 Fox reached up and waved a hand over the holographic sphere floating above the table, causing it to spin slightly. She tapped it again and it stopped, a yellow light flashing on its surface growing larger. She magnified it by tapping once on the glass, then swept her hands over the image, causing it to reform into a 3D projection of a tall egg-shaped tower overlooking a valley. “This is Station Alpha, which is where our primary base of operations _used_ to be. I managed to confine her range of perception to that area only, so she can’t see or hear what’s going on inside of the eastern outpost, which is where we are right now,” she explained.

“So we're safe from her?” Simmons asked.

“ _We_ are, for now,” Fox nodded.

“What do you mean by _that?_ ” Carolina asked, turning to face Fox.

Fox tapped the surface of the glass, and the hologram retreated as several new diagrams appeared on the table. “The weapons system you guys came to destroy is still online. CORA doesn’t have access to it yet- I was able to cut her off from that. But there’s a very real chance that she might try to push to take control of it. Again.”

“How long do we have until that happens?” Carolina demanded.

Fox hesitated. “Well….That depends on how long it takes for her to figure out that you guys survived.”

“Oh, so this is our fault?” Grif hissed.

“What? I- _no!_ This is _no one’s_ fault!” Fox exclaimed. “Look, she was always going to try to get the weapon system under her control. It’s just...that’s just how she _is_. What we need to focus on now is stopping her before that happens, and before she gets back inside of this outpost.”

“But didn’t you say she couldn’t reach us?” Sarge piped up.

“Well, yes, but also...look, it’s not that simple,” Fox said, shaking her head. “All of her _main code_ is confined to Station Alpha, but several months ago I detected an anomaly in the firewall I put up.”

“Do you know what caused it?” Simmons asked.

“I started working on the satellites to try to bring down the energy field again,” Fox replied. “About two months ago, I was able to disable one of the satellites for a short while. CORA noticed, and began attacking the firewall. I’ve had to adjust the code almost weekly since then to keep her confined. Really, it’s only a matter of time until she adapts her code in a way that allows her to bypass the firewall before I can counter it.”

This time the silence that followed was tense. Wash and Carolina exchanged a look, and Tucker could only image what they were thinking.

Fox seemed to notice the tension too, and spoke up again. “I’ve...developed a kill code. If it makes you guys feel any better. Once I have everything set to use it, we should all be able to get off of Nalome together.”

“And how long is that going to take?” Carolina asked, and this time her voice was cold.

Fox’s shoulders went stiff, and she turned her head to look at Carolina. “Depends…” she began evenly, “on how willing you are to help me with it.”

Carolina took a breath like she was going to say something, but Tucker beat her to it, speaking up quickly. “Why do you need our help? It’s just typing stuff into a computer, right?”

“It’s not that simple,” Fox replied exasperatedly. “I need to manually enter in the override code in all four of the outposts. So far, I’ve only been able to do that to this one.”

“So what you’re saying is you need us to split up to get to the other outposts,” Wash reflected.

“Only if you’re up for it.”

“Well little lady, it doesn’t seem like we have much of a choice, now do we?” Sarge said.

“Could we not get involved in other people’s problems for once?” Grif moaned.

“If it’s the only way we’re getting out of here, then we’ll do it,” Wash said with a nod.

Fox let out a relieved sigh. “I’ll get some stuff together to help you guys out. There are some Warthogs in the sublevel motor pool if you want to go ahead and get those prepped. When I’m ready, I’ll call you guys back here for a briefing before you set out.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Wash nodded.

“Grif! What are you still doing standing here! Go prep those Warthogs. Step lively! Hop to it!” Sarge shouted at Grif.

Grif sighed and wandered off with Simmons tailing him. Tucker watched them go, then muttered out, “C’mon Caboose. Let’s go with them,” before following them.

 

* * *

 

Once Fox had left,  Locus had mustered up the strength to get up and take a look around the room he was in. After some inspection, he decided that the space wasn't intended to be used as a long-term holding cell. He reckoned it was more used for storage or quarantine if anything else. The walls had panels in them that if he pressed on them, they would extrude into a workbench or a drawer filled with tools. Unfortunately, there was nothing of actual use to him in any of them.

The glass panel that served as the way into the room was airtight and extremely strong. Locus took a swing at it once just to test it’s thickness and came away with a sore hand. It didn’t take him long afterwards to decide that any attempts at escaping he may have tried to make were futile. Sighing, he sat back down on the edge of the bed, the wheels in his head turning.

He considered the private channel Fox had given him, but he decided he didn’t trust her nearly enough to initiate a conversation. Especially since he had no way of knowing if the channel was actually private or not. However, sitting around and waiting for something to happen was hardly an appealing option. Though it wasn’t as if he had much choice in the matter-

Locus blinked, then looked up when he heard what sounded like _footsteps_ down the hall. He waited for a moment, watching the hall through the glass wall through narrowed eyes, only to sigh when Fox stepped into his view.

“Get some more rest?” she asked, stopping in front of the room he was in.

Something in her voice sounded genuine. Like she actually cared about whatever answer he might give her. And for some reason that only made Locus more wary. He opted for silence, deciding that it was better to give her as little information on his current state of being as possible lest she try to use it against him later.

Fox stood patiently, waiting for an answer, and when she realized she wasn’t going to get one, deflated a little. “Not in a talking mood, huh?”

“Why are you here?”

Fox seemed taken aback by the question, tilting her head slightly. “What do you mean?”

“What do you want?”

Fox straightened her head back out and shifted her weight to one leg. “Well, I figured that since the peanut gallery is out running around to try to get everyone off of this moon, no one would notice if I moved you to more….reasonable accomodations. Since you’re literally being kept in the same place we used to shove extra ammo crates...or idiots who got the space equivalent of a terrible case of poison ivy. Probably a good thing you kept your armor on.”

Locus tensed slightly at her response. This was a trap. It had to be. Fox had no reason to want to move him. It was probably safer for her to keep him here. So either she was extremely naive, or she had something planned. He worked through all the possible scenarios in his head of how whatever happened next could go. She could open that door and he could snap her neck. She didn’t look like much of a fighter. Or maybe she was, and was just very good at making herself seem like she wasn’t a threat. But if he did kill her, where would he go? He didn’t know the layout of wherever he was being kept. But the odds that he would last very long, especially with the Sim Troopers and Freelancers in the same building, were very low. Biding his time and waiting for an opportune moment was the best option he had, but it still wasn’t exactly favorable. He considered this as he watched Fox cross her arms over her chest. The silence from her alerting him to the fact that she had likely just said something that he had missed.

“Well?” she asked.

“What?”

A sigh. “I asked; if I let you out, are you going to try to do something stupid like kill me?”

 _I considered it_ , Locus had half a mind to answer. But instead he kept it to a simple, “no.”

Fox nodded, seeming satisfied with this answer. “Good, because with how bad your injuries were from the crash, you’d probably only hurt yourself even worse.”

Locus couldn’t tell if there was a threat in her words or not.

Fox hit a panel on the wall, and the glass door slid back, opening the room into the hall. She took a step back, glancing around quickly before gesturing him to follow her. “You can walk on your own, right?” she asked.

Locus didn’t answer her, and instead stood and made his way over to her. This close, he realized just how _short_ Fox actually was. She had to be at the very least a full foot shorter than him. Yet she carried herself like she was much, much taller. Once upon a time, he might have found something like this to be mildly amusing. But now he could only think about how he could use it to his advantage.

“Yes, yes, I _know_ , I’m tiny. But I could still probably bench you, so don’t get any ideas,” Fox said, turning and starting down the hall.

Locus tailed her, tensing at every odd sound he heard around him. The longer they walked, the more he wondered where they were, and _why_ it was in such a poor, decaying state. He gathered that they were likely at some sort of outpost on the moon, but surely something as big as that would have to be well taken care of. It didn’t make sense that it would be rusting and covered in dust and oil stains. “Where is everyone else?”

“Hm? Oh, the peanut gallery is-”

“Not them.”

Fox looked back over her shoulder at him. “You mean the people I came here with?”

“Yes.”

She was silent for a moment, looking back ahead of her. “Dead,” she said after a moment.

And Locus couldn’t help but stop suddenly at that, if only for a second. Because what in the world had he been thrust into? The Sim Troopers and Freelancers had only arrived a few hours before him, presumably. Which meant that Fox had either been on the moon by _herself_ for whoever knows how long. Or something was going on that he wasn’t fully aware of yet.

“How?” he asked.

And Fox sighed at this, and Locus noticed how her shoulders sagged slightly. “I...made a mistake,” she said. And as they made their way through the halls of the outpost, Locus listened with troubled curiosity at how the AI Charon had sent to the moon with Fox and her team had killed every last person on Nalome save for her.

She fell silent when they reached the ground level and led him through a series of darkened labs, one of which had an array of scrap metals scattered across a workbench. They entered another hall and Fox led him towards an elevator at the end of it. When they reached it, Fox punched in a code, then stepped back in waiting.

 

The silence from her grew wider for only a moment before she spoke again; “y’know, I think we have some stuff in common, you and I.”

And Locus couldn’t help but indulge her because honestly, what could he have in common with _her_? “What makes you say that?”

Fox turned her head, but didn’t look completely back over her shoulder at him. “Well...we’ve both hurt a lot of people. People we didn’t necessarily want or need to hurt. I didn’t want my friends to die for this stupid project of Hargrove’s. I fought back. I stuck too hard to my beliefs. And it got people hurt. Kind of like you. So I guess you could say we’re both terrible soldiers,” she said with a dark chuckle.

And _that_ drove a spike of tension straight down Locus’ spine because she had no _idea_ what she was talking about. And he said so, his voice a low growl.

And _now_ Fox looked back at him, and there was something in the way she held herself that made her seem so certain, like she _did_ know what she was talking about. And then Locus remembered the file she had mentioned when he first woke up, and wondered if everything she had brought up was in there too. And what else she knew. And he decided in that moment that Fox was _absolutely_ a threat.

“It’s okay, you know,” she said, and Locus didn’t understand why her voice sounded so gentle even though he had just snapped at her. “You’re allowed to admit you messed up. It doesn’t make you weak. I mean, shit, if it did, I’d be a literal fucking noodle in power armor. And I’m pretty sure I’m not, so…”

Locus opened his mouth to reply to that, but the breath escaped as a hiss between his teeth as the elevator arrived with a cheery _ding!_

Fox sighed  and stepped into it, turning to face him and leaning back against the wall. Locus watched her for a moment, wondering if it was wise to follow her in. She didn’t appear to be armed, so there was a chance she _wasn’t_ going to try to kill him on the ride up. But one could never be too cautious. He resolved to step into the elevator and stand as far away from her as he could.

When Fox saw this, she let out a little laugh. “Gosh, I don’t _bite_ , you know.” Then, “hey, hit the button for the fourth floor, if you don’t mind. Quarters are up there.”

 _Quarters?_ Surely Fox wasn’t thinking about putting him on the same hall as everyone else. Locus could only imagine how that would go. “Where is everyone else staying?” he asked cautiously, looking over his shoulder at her.

“Opposite wing. Don’t worry, I’m not putting you near them. Because safety and all that. Also I don’t want this whole situation we’re all stuck in to turn into a murder mystery,” Fox replied.

Locus turned away from her with a sigh and pressed the button, watching absently as the elevator doors slid shut. He listened to the hum of machinery, thankful for the silence from Fox.

When they reached the fourth floor, Fox led him down a hall lined with sliding doors, stopping at the one at the very end.

“Here’s your stop,” she said cheerfully. “The dynamic duo is probably going to interrogate you soon, so keep that in mind. It’s probably a good thing I took all your weapons from you, that way when you guys _do_ have a chat, at least they won’t feel like you’re some sort of threat,” she added, looking back at him. “Go ahead and get settled in. Or don’t. Up to you, really. But I _am_ going to have to seal this wing off. Sorry. The peanut gallery doesn’t trust me as it is. I can’t let them think I’m letting you just roam around.”

 _Of course,_ Locus thought bitterly, though he understood her reasoning. With current events proceeding the way they were, allowing him any amount of freedom would only result in unnecessary tension that would heighten everyone’s misery. “Understood,” he replied.

Fox held his gaze for a moment, then let out a long sigh. “Well, I’m gonna go try to dismantle a weapons system and kill a murderous AI,” she said, brushing past him and heading back down the hall. “If you need me, and I’m still alive, you know the channel to use. Just hit me up and I’ll see what I can get done for you, yeah?”

And without thinking, Locus said, “wait,” and watched her come to a halt and look back at him.

“What's up?” She asked.

She was his ticket off this moon. Away from Chorus. The knowledge that he needed her help tasted like vinegar, but he swallowed it anyways. “I can help.” _Get her to trust you. Use her naivety to your advantage._

“Oh yeah? You good with computers?” Fox asked, fully turning to face him now.

 _Sell yourself. Make her believe you're useful._ “Yes. And anything I don't know, I can learn quickly _.”_

Fox seemed to consider this, tapping a finger against the chin of her helmet. “Alright. I think I can find something for you to do. But you can't wander off, alright? The peanut gallery is nervous enough having you around. I'd hate to think of what they'd do if they found out you were loose.”

He nodded in understanding.

“Though, you sure you don’t want to rest a bit?” Fox asked, and Locus wondered if the concern in her voice was sincere.

 _You’re fine._ “I’m fine.”

She shrugged. “Suit yourself, fam,” she said, then gestured for him to follow her as she continued down the hall.

Locus tailed her at a cautious distance, tensing at every sound, every reflection in the corner of his eye. _Relax. You have her where you need her now._

“Y’know I’m kind of relieved you offered to help. Truth is, we really need as many people working on this thing if we want to get out of here any time soon,” she admitted.

But Locus barely heard her. Head down, shoulders stiff, he trudged behind her, the wheels in his mind grinding into place as he realized exactly what it was about the voice in his thoughts that was making his skin crawl.

It sounded just like Felix.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 4, also entitled “Fox is Hopefully Not As Naive as She’s Been Acting, Wash Learns What A Migraine Feels Like, And Locus Continues to be My Favorite Looney Tune”
> 
> Felix shut the fuck up you’re dead. Piss off. Let the man live, you little shit.
> 
> Anyways. Exposition-No-Jutsu, as I promised. It sucks, but there’s like, literally nowhere else for me to put this disgusting wall of text. Just bear with me. These next few chapters will have a bit more action in them and a lot less standing around. Finally.
> 
> Probably around Chapter 7-8-ish is where you guys will finally meet CORA. Though if I can commit enough word murder in these next chapters, it might be sooner than that. Hopefully. Who knows?
> 
> Side note: why the FUCK is Halo armor like that? How dare. Someone send help and gallon of ice cream. After drawing that crap, I need it.


	5. Ghost

“This is such bullshit,” Grif moaned, staring up at the decaying form of the North Outpost. “I can’t believe we’re running errands for some lady we just met to some broken down old outpost that’s _probably_ fucking haunted or something!”

“Oh, don’t be such a baby,” Simmons chimed, walking past with Caboose in tow. “It can’t be that bad. Fox said that there was no one else on this moon save for us and her.”

“And _Locus,_ who she seemed _very_ concerned about, according to Wash,” Grif reminded him.

“Eh,” Simmons shrugged. “I mean, she’s keeping him locked up like Wash and Carolina told her to, so it’s not really a problem-”

“Even though she’s currently stuck at the South Outpost? Alone? With _him_?”

Simmons paused, looking on as Caboose continued past him towards the entrance to the outpost. “She’s...probably fine.”

“A lot could have happened in the hour that it took us to get here, is all I’m saying,” Grif said, walking past him.

Simmons just let out a nervous, feathery chuckle, and followed him.

An hour ago, Fox had seen them and the others off from the motor pool with data chips for each group, and the promise that she would be working from her end to ensure the override codes for each of the outposts went through smoothly. An hour ago, Wash had been telling them to keep their comms on and to report back regularly because despite what Fox said, he didn’t trust her and wanted to make sure everyone was okay. An hour ago, they had all headed off in opposite directions to carry out the plan.

And now they were here, crawling into the North Outpost through a hole punched into its side by god-only-knows- _what_ , with Caboose at the helm chattering on about ghosts while the other two followed.

It was going to be a long day.

 

* * *

 

“Jesus, the housekeeping around here is shittier than a one-star hotel,” Grif said, taking a look around once they all clambered into what might have been a motor pool at one point.

“Fox _did_ say that her outpost was the only one being occupied,” Simmons said, staring up at the mangled corpse of a catwalk overhead.

“Yeesh,” Grif said, coming to stand beside him, following his gaze. “Wonder what did that.”

“I’m not sure I really want to find out,” Simmons said, looking over as Caboose walked past towards the doors that would lead them deeper into the outpost. “Hey, where are you going?”

“Oh, you know, forward,” Caboose replied, stopping and looking back at him. “Yeah, I don’t wanna make the ghosts mad. They don’t like it if you stare, ‘cause it’s rude.”

“There aren’t any ghosts,” Grif said, the eyeroll apparent in the tone of his voice. “Look, let’s just do what we came here to do, alright? This place looks like it could fall apart any minute.”

“Lead the way,” Simmons replied.

And so through the winding halls of the abandoned outpost they wandered, ducking under rotting cables dangling from the ceiling and climbing over fallen support beams and rubble until they reached the control room.

After prying the rusted sliding doors apart, the three shuffled inside, peering around warily.

“You two cover the door while I take care of the override,” Simmons instructed, approaching the wall of monitors, the data chip Fox had given him with the code in one hand.

“Yeah, if you can even get those computers to _work_ ,” Grif muttered, turning and facing the door.

Caboose, however, remained facing Simmons, fidgeting. He was oddly silent for a while, watching the other man work, and seemed to withdraw a little bit when Simmons got the computers running with a victorious “yes!”

“Simmons?”

“Huh?” Simmons looked over his shoulder at Caboose.

“You’re not gonna hurt her, are you?”

Simmons stared. “What? I- It’s just a computer, Caboose.”

“He’s talking about the AI,” Grif said without taking his eyes off the hallway.

“Ohhhh,” Simmons said, looking over at him, then back at Caboose. “Uh, no. At least I don’t _think_ it should hurt her. I mean-” He looked back at the screen as it loaded the desktop. “You _do_ know she’s going to try to kill us, right?” he asked, once again looking back at Caboose.

“Yeah…” Caboose said, looking down at Freckles, who he held tightly in his hands. “I just don’t want her to be sad is all.” He looked back up at Simmons, shuffling his feet a little. “‘Cause Miss Fox said she used to be ok, but then Mangrove made her mean. And, well, maybe she’s sad about it because now Miss Fox wants to leave and she’s going to lose her best friend, y’know?”

Grif and Simmons stared at one another, each wondering if the other was thinking the same thing. After a moment, Grif cleared his throat and said, “this is about Church, isn’t it?”

“What? Noooo. It’s definitely not about him,” Caboose replied, not looking at either of them.

“Dude, it’s _definitely_ about Church,” Grif said, turning to face him.

Caboose met his gaze for a moment, then looked down at the ground, emitting a soft “yeah.”

Grif and Simmons exchanged a look. “Caboose…”Simmons began, “...we’re...we’re all upset about Church. And we know you miss him, but…”

“He’s not coming back,” Grif finished, then backpedaled on the snap in his tone and said more gently, “and that sucks and all, but he...he probably wouldn’t want you to be sad about it, right?”

“Yeah…” Caboose said again, still staring the floor.

“And besides, Church used to leave all the time,” Grif continued, earning a sharp look from Simmons that he ignored. “It’s the same thing...kinda. Not really. Look, you get what I’m saying, alright?” Grif said, turning away.

“I just wish he said goodbye this time,” Caboose said. And the way he said it made both Simmons and Grif look back at him in surprise.

“Aw dude, you’re not crying are you?” Grif asked.

“No,” Caboose sniffled. “Yeah, I just have allergies...to being sad.”

Simmons sighed and looked back at the monitors, sliding the chip into the control panel in front of him. He opened the .exe file and began to run it in silence, listening to Caboose sniffling behind him. “I miss him too,” he said suddenly, after a long while. “I mean, he was kind of an asshole sometimes, but he wasn’t, like, a bad person, or anything.”

Grif hesitated, then made a little sound in agreement and nodded his head. “Look...uh...just hang in there, I guess? You, uh, you won’t be sad forever. And...and remember who your friends are, ‘cause we’ve got your back...and stuff,” he said, stepping forward hesitantly and giving Caboose an awkward pat on the shoulder. For a moment, he felt his heart sink when he heard Caboose sniffle again, but then relaxed when he looked back and said, “yeah...I-I feel a little better now.”

“Good,” Grif sighed, relieved.

“Does this mean I’m a part of Red Team now?” Caboose asked.

“ _No._ ”

 

* * *

 

“It’s just like we’re in a spy movie!” Donut squealed as Tucker cut a hole through the entrance to the East Outpost with his sword.

“Ya could’ve just let me shoot the door open to save some time,” Sarge protested.

“What, and have the bullets bounce back and hit us? I don’t think so!” Tucker replied, stepping through the hole he made.

“Hmph,” Sarge said, grumbling under his breath as he followed him, Donut clambering in after.

The inside of the East Outpost was dark with a few small beams of light filtering in through holes hidden holes in the walls. A greenish haze cloaked the floor, concealing rubble and fallen cables that became apparent as the three stumbled their way through the ground level.

“Jesus,” Tucker said, looking around. “Fox said she was only here by herself for four years, how is everything falling apart like this?”

“Must be the air,” Sarge proposed. “Didn’t y’see how yellow everything looked comin’ in?”

“That was definitely from the forcefield,” Tucker replied.

“The control room is a few floors up, right?” Donut asked, changing the subject.

“Should be the same as the other one,” Sarge nodded. “Fox mentioned that all these outposts were identical.”

“We need to find the stairwell,” Tucker said.

“Or we could just hotwire the elevator!” Sarge suggested.

“Wouldn’t you need electricity for that?” Donut asked.

“ _Lopez_ would be able to do it,” Sarge huffed.

“Look, just, there should be a way up ahead on the right,” Tucker said, pushing past them and starting down the hall.

Sarge and Donut exchanged a look. “Jeeze, what’s got his panties in a bunch?” Sarge muttered, following Tucker.

“Tucker in panties? Now _there’s_ a sight,” Donut giggled, hurrying after them.

 

* * *

 

“This is the worst idea. Ever. Of all time,” Tucker groaned.

“Oh, quit yer yappin’!” Sarge called back over his shoulder. “You had your turn to come up with a plan, and it failed. Now you get to see how us Reds do things!”

“It’s easy, Tucker! All you have to do is pretend you’re pole-dancing!” Donut shouted up from below.

Tucker let out a world-weary groan, pressing his forehead against the cable he was climbing. The stairwell he had located had been blocked off by rubble, and Sarge decided that they had wasted enough time, and that his plan was better, and wouldn’t take no for an answer. And now they were climbing up cables in an elevator shaft to try to reach the floor the control room was on.

“There were other stairwells, you know,” Tucker grumbled.

“Aw, come on, Tucker! Where’s your sense of adventure?” Donut chuckled.

“Buried in the dirt with the ship,” Tucker huffed.

“Here’s our stop!” Sarge declared, nodding at a set of doors directly above him.

“You sure that’s the right floor?”

“If it ain’t, we can keep climbing!” Sarge replied.

Tucker hoped it was the right floor.

It took a plasma sword and a little bit of manhandling to get the thick hallway doors open. Once they had all climbed out of the shaft, they made for the control room. Tucker noted the much more intact condition of the current floor they were on, and wondered if at some point, Fox had camped out and tried to enter the override herself before CORA drove her away. Momentarily distracted by his speculations, he didn’t notice that Sarge had gone ahead of him until he heard the other man exclaim, “found it!”

Sarge stood in front of the sealed off entrance to the control room with his head held high with pride. “Another victory for Red Team!” he stated, “better luck next time, Blue.”

“What? Hey, no fair! You snuck ahead of me!” Tucker protested, playing along.

“Ya snooze, ya lose, partner!” Sarge chuckled good-naturedly.

“Grif wouldn’t agree with that,” Donut snickered, coming to stand beside Tucker. Then said, “those doors are sealed suuuper tight. Think we can pry them open?”

“I have a better idea!” Sarge exclaimed, then turned and cocked his shotgun.

“Oh Jesus Christ,” Tucker hissed, and yanked Donut back away from the door.

“Ha _ha!_ Shotgun!” Sarge exclaimed, punching a hole through the rusted doors to the control room with his weapon.

“That’s _not_ what that means,” Tucker said.

“Maybe in your boring world it doesn’t!” Sarge proclaimed, then used the butt of his gun to widen the gap he made before wriggling through.

“There is no way I’m fitting through there,” Tucker huffed, staring at the newly-created entrance to the control room.

“I sure will!” Donut piped up, walking past him. “This isn’t the first time I’ve had to squeeze into a tight hole,” he said, crawling through.

“Bow-chicka-bow-wow,” Tucker muttered under his breath, amused. He took one quick look around the hallway, scanning their surroundings one last time before he followed Donut through.

The control room was filled with dust and and some sort of moss. Cables dangled from parts of the ceiling that were missing panels, and the round table in the center of the room had a large crack across its surface.

“How are we supposed to turn the computers on if there’s no power?” Donut asked, looking around with his hands on his hips.

“Hold on.” Tucker looked over when he heard Sarge’s muffled voice from under the main control panel. “There’s some sort of generator thing down here. Might be able to get it workin’ again.”

Tucker sighed, pulling out the data chip containing the override and turning it over in his hand. For a moment, he let his mind wander, and found himself wondering what Church would think about killing another AI. Feeling his stomach clench up, Tucker shook his head, angry at himself. _He’s gone. Just let it go already,_ he thought, biting his lip under his helmet.

“Aha! Got it!” Sarge exclaimed suddenly, and Tucker was snapped back into reality by the harsh mechanical roar of the generator.

The monitors flickered to life, and the computer towers whirred, fans working overtime against the dust caught in their blades. The lights on the control panel slowly blinked on, bouncing a faint spectrum off of the three men’s visors.

“Nice, Sarge,” Tucker congratulated half-heartedly.

“I guess you could say that generator is a real turn-on!” Donut joked, elbowing him lightly.

Tucker shook his head and approached the control panel, hesitating for a moment when he realized just how _overwhelming_ all the lights and keys and buttons were. _The login. Right. Fox gave that to you,_ he remembered after a moment, typing it in and loading the desktop up on the largest monitor on the wall. _Church wouldn’t have even needed a password,_ Tucker thought tiredly.

“Hello! Earth to Blue Team! Are ya gonna plug that data chip in or what?” Sarge asked.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m on it,” Tucker sighed. He stared at the chip for a moment, then pushed it into a slot on the control panel. A window popped up on the monitor, just like Fox had described, and he went through the motions of running the override.

“Dude, you alright?”

Tucker looked over when Donut spoke up.

“‘Cause you’ve been like, _really_ out of it since we got up here.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Ya should’ve stayed back at the outpost,” Sarge said, a scolding note to his voice. “Yer in no condition to be running around.”

“I was able to keep up with you two just fine!” Tucker protested.

“Doesn’t mean you should’ve had to,” Sarge replied.

Tucker just waved a hand dismissively and looked back up at the monitor, arms crossed. After a moment, he spoke up. “We’d be out of here by now if Church was still around.”

To the right of him, Tucker heard Sarge let out a resigned sigh. “We likely wouldn’t have _made_ it here if he hadn’t done what he did,” the other man said.

“We don’t know that,” Tucker said quietly, but deep down knew Sarge had a point. They had been outnumbered on _The Staff of Charon_. Undersupplied and exhausted from the fight with the mercs and their army of space pirates. “He should still be here.”

“So should everyone who died in that last fight.” Tucker looked over in surprise when Donut spoke up with a shrug.

“I mean, _yeah_ -”

“Yer not the first to lose a friend around here, y’know,” Sarge said.

“I _know_ that!” Tucker hissed. “But he was my _best friend_. And I thought I lost him a dozen times, but now he’s gone for good!”

“Yeah,” Sarge said, nodding. “ _Yeah_.” He was silent for a moment before saying, “but you’re still here.”

Under his helmet, Tucker made a face. “You sound just like Wash,” he huffed.

Sarge let out a loud laugh. “Y’know, if we weren’t allied against a common enemy, I’d shoot you for that insult.”

Tucker let out a chuckle, “good thing we’re on the same team.”

“Now don’t go gettin’ all cozy. Yer still a dirty Blue,” Sarge warned.

“Better Red than dead!” Donut said with a smile in his voice.

“Wh- _hey!_ It’s ‘better dead than Red’, dumbass!” Tucker exclaimed.

“Sure,” Donut nodded, “but my versions better.”

“Ooookay, Donut,” Tucker laughed, shaking his head.

 

* * *

 

“Carolina?”

Carolina kept her eyes forward and her pace steady. If Wash wanted to chat, he could do it while walking.

“ _Carolina._ ”

 _What_ could possibly be so important that he would be calling her name like that anyways? If he had something to say, he could have said it on the ride to the West Outpost.

“ _Jesus_ , boss, would you _stop_ a minute?!”

Carolina dug her heels in and stopped with a frustrated sigh. “ _What_ , Wash?” she asked, turning her head to look back over her shoulder at him.

Wash was a little ways behind her, wobbling slightly from the uneven footing of the small mountain they were hiking up to reach the West Outpost. The road had been blocked off by a rockslide, leaving them little choice but to take the long way up.

Carolina waited until Wash was by her side, grav-boots casting a faint blue glow underfoot. “Can we talk?”

Carolina made a “tsk” sound with her teeth and turned her head away. “We _already_ talked, Wash,” she said, starting to walk again.

“No, _I_ talked and _you_ deflected,” Wash said, keeping pace with her.

“ _Now_ isn’t the _time_ to talk. We have a job to do.”

“Come on, boss, we both know you’re the best damn multitasker in the galaxy-”

“ _What_ do you want to talk about, Wash?”

“I don’t know? Maybe the fucking elephant in the room? The thing we were talking about before we _crashed?_ ”

“ _Jesus_ , Wash, that’s old news.”

“Then _what_ are you so _wound up_ about?”

Carolina stopped again, grinding her teeth. “Fox.”

“Oh.” Judging by the tone of his voice, Wash _hadn’t_ been expecting that answer. “Well, what about her?”

“I don’t trust her.”

“None of us do.”

“It’s not just that. I don’t think she is who she says she is,” Carolina said, once again continuing her pace.

“Well, I mean-”

“And don’t you think she should be a _little_ bit more concerned about Locus? After what we told her about him?”

“She wasn’t there. She didn’t go through what we went through,” Wash said, catching up to her again.

“Doesn’t matter,” Carolina said, cresting the hill and turning back to offer Wash her hand to help him up. “If she still thinks he’s not a threat after what we told her, then she’s either naive, stupid, or hiding something.” She turned and faced the looming figure of the West Outpost. “And considering she apparently survived here by herself for four years, I doubt it’s the first two.” With that, she started towards the West Outpost.

Wash watched her go, then looked back the way they’d come. He could see the Warthog still on the road several hundred feet below. It had been a long climb up, but at least Carolina was talking to him now; even if it wasn’t about what _needed_ to be discussed.

There would be time for that later, Wash decided, turning and jogging to catch up with Carolina as she led them into the outpost.

 

* * *

 

Wash didn’t like the silence. Concisely, he didn’t like the silence from _Carolina._ It wasn’t that she was a particularly talkative person by nature, but the downright lack of _all_ conversation that ensued the minute they stepped inside the outpost set him on edge.

Of course it didn’t help that he was already worried about her and how she was handling what happened to Epsilon. Wash wondered if it would only make it worse to push her into talking about it; given how their chat on the hike up had gone.

As they wandered through the outpost, Wash went through dozens of ways to start the conversation in his head. By the time they reached the control room, gotten the doors open, and loaded up the monitors, he had made his choice.

“Carolina-”

“I _know_.” Carolina slid the data chip into the control panel and turned her head to look at him. “I know, Wash. I know what you’re going to say.”

“Well then you know that it’s not good to bottle up what you’re feeling, either!” Wash spluttered.

Carolina let out a sigh that seemed to slacken her whole body. “I’m still... _shocked_ ...by all of it.” She turned her head back to the monitors. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. We were all supposed to be okay. First we lost Doyle, and Armonia, and then... _Epsilon._ ”

Wash took a step towards her, reaching out and putting a hand on her shoulder. “We’ve been through a lot.”

“And it’s still not over. This weapons system, Fox, _Locus._ I mean,” Carolina let out a humorless chuckle, lowering her head, “we could have gone _home_ , Wash!”

Wash was silent for a moment. He had never been much of one to believe in trivial things like fate, but sometimes he couldn’t help but feel like they had wound up on Chorus for a reason. But instead of expressing this to Carolina, he simply said, “I know, boss.”

Carolina looked over at him, and he could feel the weariness emanating from her. “I miss him. It’s stupid, I know, but-”

“It’s not stupid, Carolina,” Wash cut her off. “He was family.”

Carolina stared at him a moment, then nodded slowly. “Yeah, he was.”

She turned and looked back at the screen, and Wash felt a little better. At least now she was being honest. He watched her type in a command to run the override, then lean back against the round central table with her arms crossed. She was silent for a moment, and Wash was about to ask her what she was thinking when she spoke up again.

“What about you?”

“Hm?”

Carolina looked over at him. “How are you handling what happened?”

“I…” Wash paused. Truth was, he hadn’t really been focusing much on his own feelings regarding Epsilon’s fragmentation. “I wish...I wish that we had...talked. About what happened, I mean. When he was first implanted.” He didn’t realize he had reached for the back of his neck until he caught his reflection in Carolina’s visor. He let his hand drop self-consciously, looking away. “We never really resolved anything...and that...that wasn’t okay.”

He was aware of Carolina’s eyes on him, and he forced himself to look back at her, growing relieved when she simply nodded and looked back at the monitors, watching the progress bar of the override crawl across the screen.

“I wish you had talked to him too,” Carolina said suddenly, and Wash raised his head in surprise. “He never talked about it, but I know he was sorry for what happened. I know it doesn’t mean anything to hear _me_ say it, but it’s the truth.”

Wash forced out the breath he realized he had been holding between his teeth and stared at the floor. “Thanks,” he said softly after a while.

And the silence stretched between them from there until the override was completed with a beeping sound followed by the data chip ejecting from the control panel.

“Looks like we’re done here,” Carolina said, pulling the chip out and looking over at Wash.

“Looks like,” he agreed.

“Let’s head back,” Carolina suggested, starting towards the doors. “We should contact the others and see where they are in case they need help.”

“Lead the way,” Wash said, following her out.

 

* * *

 

 

They were the first ones back, opting to wait until the other two groups returned until they proceeded to the control room. When Wash had contacted Fox on their way in, she had simply told them all to meet her up there once they got back.

Sarge, Tucker, and Donut where the first group to meet them back in the motor pool, bickering about team catchphrases right up until they parked their Warthog. Simmons, Grif, and Caboose pulled in second; Caboose shouting out a greeting that caused the two Reds to swear from the sheer volume of it.

Wash watched as Carolina approached both groups, then returned to his side with their data chips in her hand. “Why don’t you run these up to Fox? Knowing them,” she nodded at the Reds and Blues, “this might take a few minutes.”

“You sure?” Wash asked.

Carolina nodded. “The sooner we get everything done, the sooner we can get both Fox and Locus back to Kimball for questioning,” she said softly so only he could hear.

 _Ah. So that’s where we’re taking this._ “Right,” Wash said, taking the data chips from her. “I’ll see you up there,” he said.

“Right behind you,” Carolina replied, as she turned away.

Wash traced his steps back to the control room, noting with surprise that more of the interior lighting seemed to be working than there had been when they had left. He wondered if Fox had done a bit of maintenance while they were out. He took the elevator up, freezing when he stepped out and heard Fox’s voice. He didn’t quite catch what she had said, and had half a mind to radio her, wondering if she was trying to talk to _him_.

But then he remembered who they were sharing the outpost with, and his heart _sank._ Cursing inwardly, he drew his pistol, holding it at the ready as he crept towards the door, shoulder pressed against the wall. He paused just outside and drew in a breath between his teeth, before turning and stepping into the doorway and _freezing_ with shock.

Fox was by the round table in the center of the room, manipulating data on its screen while holo-projections floated overhead displaying graphs and readings and lines of code. And standing beside her, a datapad in his hand, was Locus.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Wraps Blue Team up in a bunch of blankets and hands them all chocolate* They’re fine.
> 
> Fox put that merc back where you found him or so help me.
> 
> Ok but real talk I really really really wanted to play around with how the members of Blue Team reacted to Church/Epsilon fragmenting. Especially Carolina and Caboose. They’re both characters who don’t come easy to me when I try to write them, so I wanted to challenge myself a bit by forcing myself out of my comfort zone. Admittedly, Carolina came much easier than Caboose did, but I’ll keep trying and hopefully get better as this fic progresses! In the meantime, I thank you for your patience :’D


	6. Belly of The Beast

“Fox!” Wash shouted, raising his gun.

Fox froze, then looked up casually, seeming unfazed by his reaction. “Oh, hey Stripes.” Then, “honey, if you’re going to point a gun at a girl, at least take her out to dinner first.”

“Not _you!_ ” Wash hissed.

Fox glanced over at Locus, who had gone rigid. “Oh, you mean Peaches over here? Sweetie, you know he’s not _armed,_ right?” She looked back at Wash and crossed her arms.

“That- That doesn’t-,” Wash sucked in a breath to try to prevent his voice from raising any further in pitch. “Are you trying to get yourself _killed?!_ ”

“Holy fuck you could shatter glass with a set of lungs like that,” Fox remarked. “And I’m pretty sure a handful of sleeping pills would do a much less painful job of killing me than whatever your friend here could try to dish out.”

Wash stared at her. How was she not taking this seriously? He couldn’t believe it. Sure, Carolina had stated that she didn’t think Fox was stupid given how long she had survived on her own with no resources and an AI that was trying to kill her, but he was _seriously_ beginning to think that she might have been completely wrong on that front.

“Hello-o, Stripes? You okay in there?” Fox asked, reaching over the table and waving a hand as close to his face as she could manage.

“You-” Wash never got the thought out before he heard the sound of the rest of his teammates down the hall.

Fox must have heard them too, because she gave Locus a little nod, and he took a few steps back.

Wash stepped inside of the control room and hugged the wall, gun still raised, and looked over when Carolina entered the room. Her surprise was short-lived as she drew both her pistols and raised them at the two across the room.

Fox made a head motion like she was rolling her eyes, and watched impatiently as the rest of the Reds and Blues filed in, each drawing their weapon and pointing it at her and Locus.

“You guys seem like you’d be great at parties,” Fox said with a heaving sigh. She looked around at everyone, seeming to size up the gravity of the situation she had found herself in, then spoke up again, “now that you’re all here, it seems I have a bit of explaining to do. Listen carefully, because I’m only saying this once,” Fox began. “If we are going to get off this miserable rock, we all - not _some_ , not _most_ \- _all_ have to work together,” she said, making a point of looking at each and every one of them. “Otherwise, the force field stays intact, CORA takes over the weapons system, and everybody _dies._ Got it?”

Wash exchanged a look with Carolina, then sucked in a breath, wanting to argue, but let it out between his teeth and simply nodded instead.

“Good,” Fox said coldly. “Now as I was _about_ to explain earlier before you started screeching at me; Sunshine here is good with computers, and he’s been helping me with the overrides you guys have been punching in.”

“Sunshine?” Wash heard Grif mutter behind him.

“We had an agreement,” Carolina spoke up.

“ _Yes_ , and I’ve stuck to it,” Fox said.”

“What? No you haven’t!” Tucker exclaimed, stepping up beside Carolina.

“Ah, right, I’m sorry,” Fox said, waving her hand. “Hold on, Grif? Honey could you step inside the control room please?”

All eyes turned towards Grif, who was currently hovering in the doorway to the control room. After a moment of hesitation, and to Wash’s astonishment, he did what he was asked.

Fox hit something on the surface of the round table, and the doors to the control room slid shut. She then leaned back and looked up at Wash, who could have sworn she was smirking at him under her helmet. “You wanted him contained, and now he is,” she said simply.

Wash stared at her in disbelief, the silent tension in the room growing between them. “You…” he began after a minute. He never finished that thought however, as Carolina spoke up before he had the chance.

“This isn’t a _game!_ He’s _dangerous!_ ” She snapped.

And Fox threw her head back and let out a laugh so loud that even Locus seemed surprised by it. “ _He_ is the _least_ of your concern right now, Lina-Bean!” she exclaimed, straightening back up and looking at Carolina a moment before swiping her a finger across the glass surface of the table. Something that looked very similar to a seismograph projected in the air in front of her.  “Anyone wanna take a guess at what this little graph might mean?”

“Is it a heartbeat?” Grif asked, sounding uninterested.

“No, but thank you for playing,” Fox replied.

“It’s…” Simmons began, studying the projection. “It’s a visually representation of some sort of activity.”

“What _kind_ of activity?” Fox asked.

Simmons froze. “Wait, that’s not- oh no-”

“Oh _yes_!” Fox exclaimed. “While you kiddos were out punching in those handy-dandy little overrides, our lovely friend, CORA, became aware of your presence.” She pointed to the right side of the graph, where the zigzagging line became more and more jagged. “Now _this_ was captured a few hours ago,” she explained, “around the same time you lot should have been running the override at each of your locations.” She then reached up and swiped left on the projection, causing the line to scroll within the graph, displaying a steady increase in activity. The graph stopped scrolling automatically, and the group watched as the data wrote itself in real time in front of them. “ _T_ _his_ is happening now.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Wash asked.

“What it means is that CORA is fucking pissed,” Fox replied. “She’s figured out what we’ve done, and now she’s going to be fighting harder than ever against the protections I’ve put around that weapons system. She’s going to try to break in, and based on this data, we’ve only got a few hours to stop her before she does. Which is _why_ I got your friend over here to help,” Fox said, jerking a thumb back towards Locus. “Because we need all the help we can get, and we’re running out of time.”

A silence settled over the room as the gravity of the situation sank in. Wash looked over at Carolina, wondering if she was thinking the same thing as him. “Is there a way we can cut the AI off to buy ourselves more time?” he asked.

“That’s what the two of us have been working on,” Fox sighed. “Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot we could do aside from set up a few more firewalls and hope that they’ll hold.”

“So then what’s the plan?” Carolina spoke up, and Wash looked over at her in surprise.

“The plan?” Fox asked, sounding genuinely surprised by Carolina’s question.

“You _do_ have a plan, right?”

“No, I do, I’m just surprised that you’re not arguing with me more is all,” Fox explained.

“Will you just-”

“Two conditions,” Fox said.

“ _Fine,_ ” Carolina hissed.

“One, you all put your guns away, because as much as I know you all love your Second Amendment rights, it’s very hard to science when you’re staring down the barrel of a shotgun.”

Carolina sucked in a breath, then exhaled slowly, nodding and holstering her pistols. Wash watched as the others did the same before he followed suit.

“Two,” Fox began, “he works with us, because like I said, we need all the help we can get,” she said, jerking her head in Locus’ direction.

Carolina turned and glared at Locus for a moment before looking back at Fox. “There’s no way to know if we can trust him,” she argued.

Fox held up a finger, then looked over her shoulder at Locus and asked, “can you play nice with the other kids?”

Locus stared at her for a moment, and Wash had half a mind to pull his pistol back out and hold it steady, but then he spoke up. “I will if they will.”

Fox looked back at Carolina. “There, see?”

“If he tries anything-” Tucker began.

“Cool it, Thin Mint, he said he’d be chill,” Fox snapped. “Now can I start explaining, or are we going to sit and wait for the doomsday clock to count down with our heads up our asses?” When no one replied, she continued. “Okay, so CORA is located at Station Alpha, as we all know. With the kill code as our primary weapon against her here, we’ve really only got one solid option of approach.”

Fox tapped the surface of the table, and the graph retracted as a white holograph of the station projected. “We’re going to be approaching the station from the north side, since that way provides the easiest and fastest access. You’re all going to be in the same teams you were in for the override mission. Tucker, Sarge, Donut, you guys have the easiest, and arguably the most fun job,” Fox explained. “You three are going to be working damage control. And by that, I mean you’re going to control how much damage you each get to do to the infrastructure of the station. Go nuts. Have fun. Launch some rockets. I don’t care. The goal is to keep CORA preoccupied. She _does_ have turrets in the halls, so be mindful. Once you start breaking shit, they’re going to come out. Stay alive, and whatever you do, don’t cause the entire station to fall down on the rest of us before we all make it out.”

“Grif, Simmons, Caboose, you’re going to be working the heavy lifting.” Fox reached into the hologram and tapped the base of the station, magnifying it and causing several images to be projected outward from it. “This is the primary energy core,” she explained, pointing to one of the images of a large piece of machinery that stretched from floor to ceiling with electricity arcing off of it. “See that round base it’s sitting on? That’s your target. The energy core shoots power into that big chamber right above it. If you knock the base off-kilter, if will cause the station’s system to go into emergency shutdown protocol. After Tucker, Sarge, and Donut start raising hell, alarms will start blaring. When you hear them, you knock that energy core off center. And whatever you do, do not, under any circumstances, touch where that lightning-looking energy is coming from. You will die. And it will suck.”

Fox looked over at Wash and Carolina. “You two, Locus, and I are gonna be up where all the magic happens.” She tapped the base of the hologram again, retracting the room with the energy core, then made a motion with both hands to magnify the entire projection, before she made a sweeping motion, which cut the station into a cross section. Wash realized when he looked closer that there were four colored dots at the base of the hologram. “We’re going to move up the central elevator shaft- climbing, not riding the elevator- that would be a death wish. Then we’re going to the first floor of the extension of the tower.” Wash watched as the dots followed the path Fox described. “Freelancers, you two are going to be in charge of getting the two of us across the bridge that separates us from the elevator that will take us to CORA. There’s a hard light bridge and a big fucking door that stands between us and our way up. Your job is to tap into the secondary power core located directly across from where the bridge starts. What you need to do is insert the data chip, which I will give you, to activate the emergency sequence. The doors will open. We’ll go through. But _don’t_ activate that chip until we are halfway, got it? Once the doors start to open, the light bridge will begin to dissolve. The only reason I’m having you open them before we’re all the way across is to save time. Once we’ve reached the elevator, you two need to head back and make your way out.”

Fox paused, looking around. “We all good so far?”

“How the fuck are we supposed to remember all of this?” Grif exclaimed.

“I’ve created a set of instructions that can be uploaded to each of your HUDs via wireless signal. I’ll ping them to you once I’m done explaining,” Fox replied. Then, “if that’s all, let’s continue; Wash, Carolina, you two will be making your way down. Locus and I will be inserting the kill code. I’m going to let you all know before I do so, and when I tell you to, Grif, Simmons, Caboose, you three need to get the fuck out of dodge. When that kill code uploads, the primary core is going to go into meltdown protocol and the chamber is going to flood. All groups should rendezvous by the entrance, do a headcount - whatever, then make for the hills.”

“What about you?” Tucker asked.

“We-” Fox cut off, looking taken aback. “We’ll figure something out. Don’t worry about us.”

“Hey, what if the kill code doesn’t work?” Donut piped up from the back of the group.

Behind his helmet, Wash blinked. He hadn’t even considered the possibility that Fox’s plan might fail. The whole thing seemed so solid. “Could it fail?” he added.

Fox looked first to Donut, then to Wash. “Well…”

“Oh you’ve _gotta_ be kidding me!” Grif exclaimed. “All this elaborate bullshit for something that might not even work!”

“Can I speak?” Fox asked with what Wash could only assume was false politeness. “The kill code has about a seventy-five percent chance of working, which might sound a bit scary. The good news is that if, in the off chance, it fails, there’s another way to shut her down.”

“And what are the odds of that working?” Wash asked.

“A hundred percent,” Fox replied.

“Okay, so just so everyone’s clear here, we’re going with the option that could _fail_ , rather than the one that guarantees success,” Grif said. “Anyone else having trouble with this?”

“Do you have a reason why we’re not going with this other method?” Carolina asked.

“Because it won’t disable Charon access to her,” Fox explained. “It’s a manual shutdown, that’s it. All we’d be doing is unplugging her from the power cores. If Charon wanted to, they could just come back here, plug her back in, and start this whole charade all over again.”

“And the kill code _will_ stop Charon from getting to her?”

“Absolutely,” Fox replied with a nod. “Not only that, but there’s a chance I could salvage some of the paralyzed code. Might be able to use it to advance a pre-existing AI. So if there’s one on Chorus, it might be useful.”

Wash exchanged a glance with Carolina, noting how the others looked around and shuffled their feet. They were all thinking the same thing. Epsilon.

“So...Any more questions, comments, concerns, complaints, or debates?” Fox asked. When no one responded, she clapped her hands together and said, “good! Then I’ll upload everything we went over to your helmets, and we can get started.”

 

* * *

 

A hot wind blew across the canyon, sweeping up the walls and rattling the alien foliage rooted in the cliff atop which the Reds, Blues, and their two companions stood. Tucker gazed across the landscape, eyes focused on the tall, gunmetal shape that rose out of the valley below. When holo-projected, Station Alpha had seemed far less imposing. But this close; seeing the light of the sun gleam harshly off of the areas of the dark exterior not yet oxidized by the poisonous air, and realizing that they were nothing but ants staring up at a skyscraper, made something twist in Tucker’s gut.

“We should get moving.” He turned and looked over his shoulder when he heard Carolina speak. “The longer we stay here, the more likely we are to be noticed.”

When Fox didn’t respond to her request, Tucker looked over at her. She was still perched on the hood of the Warthog she had been driving, looking through the scope of Locus’ sniper rifle.

“Fox?” Carolina said again, sounding a little impatient.

“She knows we’re here,” Fox said suddenly. “Satellites on the east side are rotating. Chances are she cracked the encryption on our radio channel. That, or another asshole is about to crash their ship on my moon.”

Tucker couldn’t help but feel a little bad for wishing it was the latter. He watched as Fox hopped off the hood of her Warthog and handed the rifle back to Locus, who hadn’t left her side since they all filed out of the control room hours ago. _Coward_ , Tucker thought bitterly. _Probably plans on using her as a meat shield when we drag him back to Kimball._

“Everyone remember what they’re doing?” Fox asked, leaning against the driver’s side of the Warthog and looking around at everyone else.

“You betcha, lil’ missy!” Sarge barked. The others murmured in agreement, save for Caboose, who shouted, “yes Miss Fox!”

“Alright,” Fox said with a nod. “Let’s get this party started.”

 

* * *

 

“Fuck, this place is creepy,” Tucker hissed, looking around warily as he, Sarge, and Donut crept through the harshly lit halls of the station.

“Kinda weird that nothing’s tried to kill us yet,” Donut whispered.

“That’s ‘cause we haven’t gotten started yet!” Sarge exclaimed over his shoulder.

“Fox said to damage the infrastructure,” Tucker said.

“She also said something about turrets, I think?” Donut added.

“Then we catch those sons of bitches with their pants down, and take ‘em out before they can kill us!” Sarge declared, picking up his pace and marching right towards what appeared to be a fuse box on the wall. Once he reached it, he yanked it open before firing his shotgun into it, sending a blast of sparks and metal fragments flying through the air.

Tucker walked over to him, Donut on his heels, asking “what did that do?”

“The lights are still on,” Tucker pointed out, looking around.

“Huh,” Sarge said, scratching the side of his helmet. “Well it _looked_ like it would do something.”

“Here, let me try,” Tucker said, squeezing past him and activating his energy sword, jamming it into the fuse box.

Immediately, the overhead lights flickered overhead and a screeching sound blasted through the intercoms.

“Jesus fuck! What was _that?!_ ” Tucker exclaimed, pulling back and looking around wildly, his heart sinking as he noticed the ceiling panels above them shifting.

“Well, that certainly did _something_ ,” Donut mused.

“Hooooly shit, take cover! Take _cover!_ ” Tucker screeched, diving into the corridor across from the fuse box right as the turrets unfolded themselves from the ceiling and open fired. Sarge and Donut followed suit, and the three of them hugged the walls, as shrapnel and bullet casings skittered across the floor. The sound of the turret fire stopped suddenly, and Tucker held his breath and listened.

**"Come out, come out, _wherever_ you are."**

“What the fuck?” Tucker whispered, exchanging a look with the two Reds.

“Was that _her?_ ” Donut squeaked.

**"You can't hide from me, little bugs."**

“How the fuck are we supposed to get past those?” Tucker hissed.

“Well, we can’t go under them,” Sarge began, and Tucker looked over at him, back going stiff when he saw the rocket launcher in his hands that he was in the process of loading. “Can’t go over them.” He finished loading the weapon. “Guess we’ll have to go through them.” Sarge looked back at Tucker for a moment, and he would’ve sworn that if the older marine had his helmet off, there would be a shit-eating grin on his face. Then he stepped out into the hall and pulled the trigger.

Tucker turned away from the explosion and covered the back of his head with his hands. When he unwound himself, Sarge was back in front of him, reloading. The two met eyes, and Sarge said, “that’s one,” before leaning back out and firing again.

Tucker turned away, wheels in his head turning. If this station was anything like the outposts, then the walls would be _filled_ with cables and important machinery, _right?_ he thought. Rising to his feet, he whirled and jammed his sword into the wall, then started walking, dragging the blade through the metal as he went. Sparks flew everywhere, and he could have sworn he heard that synthetic voice screech something overhead. Then suddenly, the hallway was flooded with a red light, and alarms started blaring.

 **"Intruder alert. Primary security measures activated."** The overhead voice warned. Then,  **"I _really_   do _hate_ being driven to violence."**

Tucker stared up at the ceiling, searching for the source of the voice, then looked back at Sarge and Donut.

“Well, we got the alarms going,” Donut said, giggling nervously.

“Don’t slow down yet, boys,” Sarge barked, reloading his rocket launcher and hefting it onto his shoulder. “We’ve only just gotten started,” he said, before charging into the hallway with a fierce battle cry.

 

* * *

 

“Those are the alarms,” Simmons said, looking upwards towards the source of the sound and flashing red lights.

“How can you hear _anything_ other than this piece of shit right now?!” Grif shouted over comms, gesturing towards the massive power core below the catwalk they were standing on.

“Why are we all yelling?!” Caboose shouted.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Grif moaned.

“We need to get that core knocked off center,” Simmons reminded, trying to keep everyone on task. The sooner they did their job, the sooner they could get out of here. The sooner they got out of here, the sooner he wouldn’t have to worry about all three of them being fried to death.

“How are we supposed to _move_ this thing?” Grif asked, hopping over the railing of the catwalk and beginning to climb down the maintenance ladder.

“We could give it a push!” Caboose suggested.

“Yeah, moron, and get fucking electrocuted in the process. Great idea,” Grif snapped, reaching the ground and backing away from the ladder for Simmons to climb down.

“The base of the power core is rotatable,” Simmons mused, turning and looking at the power core. Despite the visual filters in his visor, he still found himself squinting when he looked at the energy beam. “Grif, didn’t you bring some charges?”

“Well yeah, but we’re not supposed to get close to that thing,”Grif replied. “We can’t set them if we’re going to get fried just from trying.”

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” Caboose exclaimed, hopping off the ladder halfway down, and bouncing when he landed. “I know! Why don’t we just _throw_ the charges?”

“Because they’re not grenades!” Grif exclaimed. “They’ve got a timer on them! Throwing them won’t do shit except maybe blow us up if they get zapped by that lightning!”

“Well, we can’t get close,” Simmons said. “Maybe we could slide them across the floor towards the base?”

“Yeah, and what happens when that doesn’t work?” Grif asked.

“Well we won’t know until we try,” Simmons sighed.

Grif pulled out the charges, and handed them off to Simmons, then said, “C’mon, Caboose. Let’s go make some cover.”

Simmons fiddled with the charges, setting the timers for all four of them, but taking care not to start the countdown. Grif and Caboose worked together to tear a rusty part of the wall away as a form of makeshift cover.

“Ready when you are,” Grif sighed once he and Caboose had finished.

“Wait, you’re making _me_ throw them?” Simmons asked.

“It was your fucking idea!” Grif shot back.

Simmons drew himself up to argue, but thought better of it, and turned back towards the power core. Swallowing hard, he stepped forward and slid the charges one by one towards the base, then turned and scrambled for cover, diving behind the chunk of metal with Grif and Caboose. The three braced themselves, and Simmons prayed that the cover they were behind would be thick enough to protect them from the blast.  

But nothing happened.

Grif peeked out from cover to steal a look at the charges. They were still right where Simmons threw them; all piled up near the base of the power core. He stared at them for a moment, then ducked back into cover. “Simmons,” he began, trying to keep his voice level, “how much _time_ did you put on those charges?”

“Five minutes,” Simmons replied. “Why?”

Grif stared at him incredulously. “ _Five minutes?!_ ” he roared. “Five _fucking_ minutes, Simmons? Are you _serious?!_ Why the fuck would we even _need_ that much time?!”

“Well excuse me for not wanting them to blow up in my face!” Simmons snapped back. “There’s nothing wrong with being a little cautio-”

He never got to finish his sentence as a bolt of energy split off the reactor and hit the charges, setting them off in a burst of white light and shrapnel. The three marines skittered as far behind their cover as they could, clinging to each other.

It wasn’t until the noise of the explosions and the roar of the power core subsided that the three unwound themselves and dared to look out from behind their cover. Simmons leaned out, scanning the scene before them, waving a hand in front of his face to try to clear some of the smoke.

“It’s really quiet,” he said softly.

“Do you think it worked?” Grif asked at the same volume.

“Why is everybody whispering?!” Caboose exclaimed in what he probably _thought_ was a quiet voice, but somehow managed to be both a whisper and a shout at the same time.

“Jesus Christ,” Grif muttered, then climbed over Simmons and crept out from behind cover.

“Where are you going?” Simmons hissed.

“To see if it worked,” Grif replied without looking back, drawing his gun and holding it steady.

“Oh, what, and if it’s still running, are you gonna shoot it?” Simmons’ voice was laced with sarcasm.

“Will you just shut up for a minute?” Grif snapped back, creeping closer. It was hard enough to see through the smoke. He didn’t need Simmons bickering with him. He continued forward until his foot scraped against something hidden by the smog. He waved at it, trying to clear it away, but stopped when he saw a light ahead. A light but no noise. Had Fox said something about that? He couldn’t remember. “Hey, I think we’re good,” he said over comms.

“You sure?”

“I mean, it looks...kinda lopsided?” Grif tilted his head slightly, just to be sure. “Yeah it’s definitely lopsided. And it’s flashing? Maybe there’s a...Wait, didn’t Fox say something about an alarm?”

“Wait hold on, I think...Listen for a second. Be really quiet.”

Grif sucked in a breath and stood still, irked that Simmons couldn’t at least tell him what he was listening _for._ Then he heard it; like a radio that had gotten submerged underwater, a distorted voice warbled faintly overhead. “Any idea what it’s saying?”

“Not sure, but I think-” Simmons cut off suddenly with a yelp when a loud drone sounded overhead, and a synthetic voice calmly said, **"I _really_   wish you hadn't done that."**

 

* * *

 

“See, I told you it wouldn’t be so bad, Stripes!” Fox called down over the sound of alarms from where she was positioned on the wall of the elevator shaft they were currently climbing.

“I hate you,” Wash replied, trying to steady his breathing, trying not to look _down._

During their fight at the Tower of The Purge, Wash had been reasonably frightened at the prospect of being nearly dropped to his death. It had never occurred to Locus that the Freelancer was actually terrified of heights. He wasn’t sure if he found this information more useful or amusing.

“How’s it look up there, Sunshine?” Fox called up towards him. Both Wash and Carolina had _insisted_ he went first. Which was understandable, all things considered. Though Locus couldn’t help but feel a little threatened by the idea of having his back to them. He turned his head and looked up the way they were headed. He could see blinking lights in the distance, which had to mean they were close.

“About three-hundred feet,” he replied, looking back down at Fox.

Fox turned back towards Wash and Carolina. “See? Look at how close we are!”

“When we get out of this, I’m shooting you,” Wash replied.

“Don’t do me any favors,” Fox replied snidely, then turned and continued climbing.

Three-hundred feet and lots of grumbling on Wash’s behalf, the four of them reached the top of the elevator shaft.

“Wash you get on the other side,” Carolina instructed, immediately making her way around to one side of the shaft doors.

Wash did as he was told, and the two attempted to pry the doors apart in vain.

“Why the hell did we give all of our charges to the other groups?” Wash exclaimed when he finally give up.

“We...could have thought weapons distribution through a little better,” Fox admitted.

“We’re wasting time on this,” Carolina huffed. “There has to be a way to get these doors open.”

“Move,” Locus said, prompting all of them to look his way. He tried to resist the urge to tense up when he saw Carolina’s hand go for her pistol once she saw what he was aiming at the door.

“You gave him a _rail gun?_ ” It was Wash who spoke up, his voice laced with disbelief.

“Well he’s not a magician, Wash. It had to come from _somewhere_ ,” Fox replied, taking a few steps away from the door.

Wash stared at her, then followed suit, backing away as well, turning his head to keep an eye on the railgun. Carolina, however, stayed put, fixing Locus with a hard gaze.

“You're in the way,” he said after a moment.

Carolina drew herself up, and said, “aim that anywhere but the door, and you’re dead.” Then she backed away, joining Fox at her side, hand never leaving her pistol.

Locus kept an eye on her until he was sure that she was out of the way, then adjusted his aim, charged the rail gun, and fired. The blast punched a reasonable-sized hole through the shaft doors, though it wasn’t quite large enough for a full-grown human equipped with power armor to climb through. He fired the rail gun twice more until it was big enough for everyone to fit through.

Carolina was the first into the hallway, then Fox, then Wash, and for a moment, Locus was alone in the dark elevator shaft. _You could just run. Activate cloaking and head back down the elevator shaft before they have time to react. You could head back to the outpost and steal one of those ships. Wait until the forcefield is down and just disappear. They would never find you-_

“Hey, are you coming?” It was Fox who spoke, peering back into the elevator shaft and looking at him. Carolina and Wash turned to do the same.

 _You should go._ Locus sucked in a slow breath, then said, “catch,” and tossed the rail gun to Fox. Then he deactivated his grav-boots and leapt across the shaft, hands reaching out and catching the edges of the hole he had made. He stayed there for a moment, trying to get his center of balance back, the still-healing wound in his side smarting from the sudden movement, then he stepped into the hall. He felt his hackles raise when he saw that both Carolina and Wash had their weapons drawn, but froze when he felt a tap on his arm. He looked over, and couldn’t help but feel a little surprised when he saw Fox holding the rail gun out to him.

“Want it back, or no?” she asked.

He stared at her for a moment, trying to determine if this was a trap or not, then slowly reached out and took the gun from her.

“Alright,” Fox said, turning and walking past him towards Carolina and Wash, the red light of the alarms nearly drowning her figure, “let’s get moving.”

She led them through a series of what appeared to be security checkpoints, punching in codes at every one to get them past, and up some stairs before they reached two large sliding doors. Instead of simply typing in the code like she had before, Fox turned and looked back at the three behind her.

“Alright, so up ahead is the secondary power core,” she said. “Carolina, you have that data chip I gave you?”

“Right here,” Carolina said, holding it up.

“Good,” Fox said with a nod. Then she turned, unlocked the doors, and stepped through.

The room the four found themselves in was dark and hot and the air felt oddly thick. Ahead, Locus could see the glowing blue form of the light bridge stretching across a seemingly bottomless gap towards a massive black door. Across from it, humming loudly, pipes and tubes that stretched towards the ceiling sticking out of it at all angles, was the secondary power core.

Fox approached it, shadowed by Carolina and Wash, and entered something into a touchscreen that was set in the machine’s shiny metal body. Locus listened idly as she explained where the data chip needed to go and when they needed to insert it, wandering towards the edge of the floor and peering into the darkness below.

“If you look at it long enough, it might stare back.”

Locus took a step backwards and looked over at Fox, who was standing a little ways behind him, arms crossed. Carolina and Wash were at the power core, eyes on him. “When do we cross?” he asked after a moment, looking back at the bridge.

“At any time,” Fox said. “When we get close to the doors, they’ll insert the data chip and open them.” She walked and came to stand beside him, looking out at the bridge. She was silent for a moment, appearing to be deep in thought. But then she turned and looked up at him, and asked, “you ready?”

“After you,” he replied.

Fox nodded, then looked back towards Wash and Carolina, raising an arm to give them a thumbs up before she turned and stepped onto the bridge.

Locus walked over to where she had stepped on, eyes watching every footstep, noting how the bridge seemed to fluctuate and waver with every movement she made. Would it hold him too? He sucked in a breath, and slowly stepped onto it. The surface felt solid, but he could feel the heat it emitted through his boots. It wasn’t particularly painful, however. He took a few more cautious steps forward, then, gaining confidence, picked up his pace to catch up with Fox, who by now was almost halfway to the doors.

“Piece of cake, right?” she asked when he fell into step with her.

Locus didn’t say anything, but looked over his shoulder back to where Wash and Carolina stood. “When are they activating the data chip?” he asked after a moment, looking back at Fox.

“When we reach the halfway marker. There’s a diagram on one of the monitors that tells them where we are on the bridge,” Fox replied, not looking at him. “They should be putting it in any second now.”

And as if on cue, there was a loud clacking sound that thrummed through the open space, reverberating off of unseen walls, and the massive doors ahead began to slowly separate.

“Alright, _now_ we need to _move_ ,” Fox hissed, and picked up her pace.

Locus did the same, watching as the gap between the two doors grew slowly larger. The light bridge beneath his feet however became more and more malleable, every step sinking farther than the last. He couldn’t help but feel a little on edge, even despite the confidence in Fox’s step, and how _close_ they were to reaching the doors-

**"That's _far_ enough."**

Locus watched as Fox stumbled to a halt, shoulders tense. She turned her head to look back at him, then gazed up at the doors, which had stopped moving. And Locus felt his heart skip a beat when he realized that they were both sinking.

Fox looked down at the bridge and hissed out a breathless,“Oh shit.” Then looked back at him and shouted, “ _run!_ ” before bolting forward.

He followed her, not breaking stride even as the doors began to grind shut with a grating sound. By the time they reached the doors they were nearly closed. Fox picked up her speed and slid through the gap across the hard light projector between the two doors. And Locus followed, diving through the remaining gap, feeling the doors scrape against his armor, tucking into a roll on the other side and coming up on one knee, then stopped.

The space he was in now was massive; stretching into the darkness both above and below the glowing blue bridge of hard light he was kneeling on. The walls on either side were covered with enormous machines and pipes that hissed with steam. Something that may have been a generator; huge and round and covered in rust emerged from an indent in the wall to the left, pipes zigzagging out of it in every direction, emitting a dull hum that filled the space.

Locus slowly rose to his feet, eyes scanning the walls, trying to take in as much of his surroundings as he could. Behind him, the massive doors slid together with a resounding _boom_ , and he glanced over his shoulder at them.

“You good?” He looked over when he heard Fox speak, and saw her standing a little ways away from him on the light bridge.

He nodded.

“Good,” she said, turning and beginning to walk away. “Let’s move.”

Locus took one last look at the machinery clinging to the walls, then jogged to catch up with her.

Up ahead was a tall pillar of light that covered everything near it in a faint blue glow. As they drew closer, Locus realized that it was a curved panel of lights that covered an elevator shaft which protruded slightly from the wall. When they finally reached it, stepping off of the light bridge and onto a narrow platform, Fox activated a touchscreen on the wall, and the doors right beneath the panel slid open.

Fox was silent the whole ride up, but Locus could feel the tension emanating from her. When the doors slid open, she didn’t immediately step out, but instead balled her hands into fists at her sides. And when the lights flickered on in sequence down the walkway ahead, illuminating what was in front of them, Locus saw why.

A massive structure protruded from the far wall across from where the elevator let off, in the shape of a ‘V’ with an indent straight through the middle of it. Tubes and cables and pipes covered the structure, and on either side of it were two panels with machinery attached to them in a way that suggested they were appendages of some sort extended towards the rounded dead-end of the catwalk containing a series of control panels before it.

“Okay,” Fox said softly, exhaling slowly. “Let’s get this over with.”

But there was something about the room that made Locus’ skin crawl. Something very wrong. But Fox had already stepped out of the elevator, so he said; “wait.”

And she turned, back rigid, and replied, “what?”

But before he could get the words out, something changed. And Locus watched Fox freeze as a sudden beam of sickly green light flared behind her, stretching their shadows long before them. And Fox turned her head, slowly, towards the source, sucking in a breath, as a monotone, synthetic voice rang out across the space;

**"Hello Commander Fox. Today is a _wonderful_ day."**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise! Fox is a little shit! The reality though is that she simply has a total of zero fucks to give. Being stranded on a moon for four years will do that to some people. 
> 
> Wash sweetie calm down you’re going to have a heart attack.  
> Carolina’s official Fox-given nickname is “Lina-Bean” and Tucker's is "Thin Mint".  
> Locus now has two nicknames. Isn’t he special?  
> I realized halfway while writing this chapter that the acronym for Sarge, Tucker, and Donut’s group is STD. Donut would probably find that hilarious. I actually had to walk away from my laptop when I discovered it. What the fuck IS my life?
> 
> Also the station and the light bridge were 3D models I made. Because I'm just that extra.  
> I might post a little doodle of that light bridge from the top down just to show how it works on my blog...
> 
> Shout out to mantisbelle on tumblr for helping me with the formatting! 
> 
> Also, BIG warning for a kinda gorey picture in the next chapter about 3/4th of the way down.


	7. Digital Deathwish

The air was still and gray and stale. The machinery in the walls hummed softly, and the rust-dulled pipes and panels vibrated against one another. Dust particles filtered down from an unknown source, glistening as they fell into the sickly green light that flared from the optic in the middle of the mechanism on the wall.

“Hello CORA,” Fox said slowly as she walked towards the control panel. Her voice was level, but her shoulders were tense. “It’s been a while.”

 **“It has, hasn’t it?”** CORA’s synthetic voice warbled slightly from the inflection to her otherwise monotone articulation. **“Which begs the question, why are you here now?”**

“To end this,” Fox replied, and this time she spoke through her teeth.

 **“I see,”** CORA intoned. **“Naturally, you would only want to finish what you started. After all, you killed all of your friends. As the sole survivor of your...abdication...I knew one day you would come to finish me off too.”**

“ _Y_ _ou_ killed them!” Fox snarled, her composure finally breaking down. “You dropped the east wing on them! You buried them alive! I _listened_ to them dying for three days with _no_ way to get them out!”

 **“And whose fault was that, I wonder?”** CORA asked, and Locus could have sworn he heard something like _amusement_ in the AI’s voice.

Fox stiffened, and her hands balled into fists at her sides. “ _Don’t_ ,” she said softly. “Don’t you _dare_ blame me for this.”

**“ _You_ updated the driver. _You_ allowed them to mutiny. _You_ left them to _die.”_**

Fox’s shoulders sank and she turned her head towards the floor, the fight leaving her body. “That’s not true,” she whispered. “I was just following orders.”

Locus felt a spike of something cold drive through him when she said that, and he quickly looked away.

 **“Your _orders_ got your friends killed,”** CORA reminded.

“My _orders_ turned you into a _monster_!” Fox snapped. “And now I’m going to put you down like one.” Then, as she pulled the kill code data chip out and shoved it into a slot on the main control panel, said over comms, “kill code is live. Begin evacuation procedures.” As the code was loaded into the system, the holographic monitor flickered, and several segments turned red and flashed warnings across them.

 **“You’re making a big mistake,”** CORA threatened.

“Only mistake I’ve ever made was you, hon,” Fox shot back without looking up at the glaring green optic. Her fingers darted across the keyboard as she typed in the command lines that would allow the kill code to run. “And I’ve got just the thing to fix it!” She exclaimed, and hit enter.

Locus wasn’t exactly sure what he had expected after the kill code was activated, but he was certain it was more along the lines of alarms and flashing red lights and some kind of voice instructions telling them to find the nearest exit instead of a piercing, bone-grating _scream_.

 **“We’ve been together since the beginning! We built these outposts from the ground up! Everything you ever accomplished was because you had** ** _me!_** **”** CORA’s voice had evolved into a thunderous mechanical _roar_ that reverberated across every surface.

“Everything we accomplished was done through _human innovation_! You’re just a machine! _We_ built you!” Fox shouted back.

 **“To** **_help!_ ** **To stop this whole operation from falling** **_apart!_ ** **”** CORA growled.

“Fat lot of good you did in that department, huh?” Fox spat bitterly.

 **“Fine,”** CORA said suddenly, her voice returning to its normal tone and pitch. **“If you won’t listen to _me_ , perhaps you’ll listen to one of your friends.”**

Locus tensed, his grip on his gun tightening. A quick scan of the room informed him however that nothing had visually changed. There were no heat signatures detected, and he couldn’t see very far through the steam with just his night vision activated. But what he _heard_ told him something very different. At first he thought it was one of the pipes, or maybe a leak somewhere, but as it drew closer and grew louder he realized he was listening to the unmistakable sound of _footsteps._

“Fox…” he warned. Out of the corner of his eye he noted that she had already turned and was facing the same direction, her shoulders stiff.

“You’ve got to be _fucking_ kidding me,” Fox hissed as the steam churned about the form of the armored figure that had stopped several feet from them at the end of the walkway.

The dull glow of the tricloptic transponder array of the C.I.O. helmet shone at them through the haze. The rest of the armor appeared to be black with purple markings patterned across it, though much of it was difficult to make out as smoke stains and dust and some type of black fluid covered most of its surface. The figure stood eerily still, and Locus wondered if it was only a trick of the light that they appeared to not be breathing.

“You just couldn’t let them rest, could you?” Fox’s voice shook when she spoke, and he looked over at her, noting the rigidness of her back how she had shifted her weight to turn her shoulder towards the figure, almost as though she was considering engaging them.

“Fox, what is this?” he asked. Whoever the figure was, they weren’t giving off any readings. Something was very wrong.

“Ludwell,” Fox said coldly.

“I thought you said he was-”

“Annie.” Locus cut off and looked back at the figure when they finally spoke up. The voice was gravely and sounded traditionally masculine. But something about it seemed synthetic.

“Ludsy,” Fox said after a moment, seeming to draw herself up beforehand. Then she turned and said, “can you take care of him? I need to make sure everything shuts down properly.”

Locus nodded and raised his gun.

“You’d be better off with a melee weapon of some sort,” Fox said before he could move. “Bullets won’t work. He’s already dead. There’s no point in trying to make him bleed out.”

“There’s something in his helmet then that’s keeping him upright?” Locus asked, slinging his gun back over his shoulder and replacing it with his plasma sword.

“Power armor was always presumably capable of being controlled remotely,” Fox replied over the sounds of her typing. “CORA likely tapped into those capabilities. She’s just using his body as some sort of makeshift endoskeleton, and using archived voice clips to try to get on my good side.”

“So aim for the head. Right,” Locus said.

“You’re in my way,” Ludwell said, tilting his head to the side as the mercenary stepped forward.

Locus barely had time to prepare himself before Ludwell lunged at him. He dodged, slashing at the corpse’s leg. Ludwell whirled, unfazed and swiped at him. Locus jammed the plasma sword underneath his chestplate. Ludwell made a sound like a stalling car. Locus barely noticed the knife in his hand in time to shove Ludwell away right as he slashed at his throat. The second time Ludwell lunged with the knife, Locus took off his hand. The corpse paused, staring at the stump that now oozed rotting fluids before turning and looking back at his opponent.

“Not bad,” he said. “But you’re too slow.” And then he lunged again.

Locus grabbed Ludwell’s wrist when he swung at him, fully intending to using his momentum against him. But Ludwell twisted suddenly and broke free, separating the two of them with a hard kick to Locus’ chest. Ludwell charged as Locus was still trying to reorient himself and sprang over him in a flip. Then landed another kick to Locus’ side in exchange for his innards as the plasma sword tore through his middle. This time Ludwell faltered, and Locus took a step back and tried to even out his breathing and ignore the fiery pain in his side from the blow to his still-healing injury.

“Sorry, did that hurt?” Locus looked up as Ludwell spoke. “You really shouldn’t be fighting me with that hole in your side.”

It occurred to Locus that CORA could likely see the readings on his condition through the C.I.O. hud, and was using the information she got to figure out where to aim. The thought made his skin crawl.

“Oh don’t look so worried,” Ludwell said. “It’ll all be over soon.” Then he shot forward, pulling a curveblade off of his hip. Locus raised his plasma sword but flinched when he caught something silver and blue shoot past out of the corner of his eye. Trying to track it left him staring at Ludwell, whose helmet had been split in half through the middle. He remained upright for only a second before crumpling in a heap to the floor, his curveblade clattering unused beside him.

Locus stared for a moment, trying to process what had just happened, when something moving through the steam caught his eye. He watched as a silver disc spun out of the darkness, flying towards Fox, who caught it one-handed. He noted that the disc seemed to float above her palm, and that when she flicked her wrist, it folded in on itself into a ring that hovered around a spherical base.

Fox nodded at him. “You okay?” she asked, holstering the sphere on her hip.

“I’m fine,” he said, stealing one last look at Ludwell’s remains before joining her back by the control panel, trying hard to mask just how much pain he was actually in.

“Good,” she said. “Kill code’s almost done too. CORA went silent a minute ago. I’m not sure if it’s because she was using Ludwell’s armor to fight you, or…” She fell silent for a moment. “If she could get to Ludwell, she could probably get to the others too. Hang on, I need to let the others know.”

She turned, and Locus listened absently as she advised the others to be on the lookout, watching the command console update as the kill code worked.

Something was off. Locus realized that CORA wasn’t trying to work against the script, or talking, or doing _anything._ Her optic was off and the sounds of machinery in the walls died down to a lull. It seemed odd that she would give up so easily.

“No, Sarge, bullets really aren’t a good idea. Trust me, I watched the one we had to deal with lose its hand and get gutted, and it _still_ kept coming. Just aim for the head and use a melee weapon. Or a grenade.” Locus heard Fox say.

He looked back at the massive hub, the billions of lights across its surface now dead. He wasn’t sure why he felt like they were still being watched.

“Because bullets won't pierce power armor. She's controlling them through- Sarge? Damnit!”

A line of code caught Locus’ attention and he stared at the command console, realizing with a sickening feeling that several errors that hadn’t been there mere seconds ago had appeared. “Fox,” he said, looking back at her, and froze. A green light scattered across the floor and cast on her armor and he watched as she slowly lowered her hand from her comm.

“That’s fucking impossible,” she breathed.

 

* * *

 

**Earlier:**

 

“That’s our cue to leave,” Grif said after Fox broadcasted the news about the killcode.

“Come on, Caboose,” Simmons said, waving smoke away from his visor as he headed in the direction of the ladder they climbed down, silently hoping it was still intact. “Over here,” he called to Grif when he found it, then reached out to begin to climb it. He hadn’t even stepped on the first rung when an alarm blared overhead and the room was flooded with yellow light.

“ _Initiating meltdown protocols,”_ a new synthetic voice said over the intercom.

“ _Move!_ ” Grif exclaimed.

_“Flood preparation sequence now active. Please clear the chamber.”_

Simmons scrambled up the ladder and peered over the edge of the catwalk to watch as Caboose and Grif followed him. Caboose climbed up second, and Grif followed. Simmons offered his hand to him to help pull him up, and he took it.

“You good?” Simmons asked, patting Grif on the shoulder when he bent over with his hands on his knees once he was on the catwalk.

“Fantastic,” Grif replied, somewhat breathlessly. Then glanced left and right before asking, “hey where’s Caboose?”

Startled, Simmons turned his head and looked down the hall in the direction Caboose had wandered towards, “dude, he’s right….there….”

Grif leaned to the side and looked past Simmons towards what the other man was staring at, and froze.

Caboose was at the end of the hall, and in front of him, behind the glass security doors, was a figure in power armor.

“Caboose, get back here!” Grif shouted.

Caboose turned and gave him a wave. “Oh, hey guys, I think I made I new friend!”

“Caboose, that isn’t one of our friends!” Grif exclaimed, while Simmons muttered, “I’m not getting any readings on them.”

Grif stared at him a moment, then turned back to Caboose, and more frantically shouted, “Caboose, for fuck’s sake, _get away from them!_ ”

Caboose drew in a breath like he was about to protest, but was cut off when the marine drove their fist through the glass. As they stepped through, Grif realized that there was a gun in their hand. “ _Shit!_ ” he hissed, and stumbled upright, grabbing for his gun. He barely got it into his hands in time before the marine started shooting at them. Without thinking, he grabbed Simmons’ hand and pulled him around the corner, hugging the wall.

“What about Caboose?!” Simmons screeched over the sound of gunfire.

“That idiot can take care of himself. He’s like a robot whisperer, right?” Grif said, trying to mask his worry with humor.

“Robots give off readings you dumbass!” Simmons exclaimed.

“Well excuse me for not being a fucking expert!” Grif snapped, leaning around the corner when the gunfire ceased suddenly. What he saw made his stomach drop.

The marine had Caboose in a headlock and was pressing their gun to his temple. “Come out or your friend dies,” they said in a rich, traditionally feminine voice. But something about it was wrong, synthetic, like it was a bunch of words chopped together instead of a flowing sentence.

“You sure they’re not a robot?” Grif hissed to Simmons.

“Definitely,” Simmons replied.

“What do we do?”

“Well we can’t just let him _die!_ Wash will kill us!” Simmons exclaimed quietly.

Grif stared at the marine for a moment, grip tightening on his gun, then he muttered, “son of a bitch,” and stepped out from behind cover.

“Drop your weapon,” the marine said.

“Let Caboose go,” Grif shot back, his voice wavering with false confidence.

The marine tilted her head. “Don’t make me ask you twice,” she warned. “And tell your friend to come out and do the same.”

Grif sucked in a breath, then slowly placed his gun on the ground, backing away from it. Simmons walked out from behind cover, hands up.

“Good,” the marine said, then roughly shoved Caboose towards them and raised her gun. “Now die.”

Grif grabbed the front of Caboose’s chestplate and dragged him to the floor while Simmons scrambled for the abandoned gun. He fired off a shot that hit the marine in the shoulder, jerking her backwards and buying them some time to dart into cover.

“Jesus _fuck!_ ” Grif exclaimed breathlessly. “Caboose, what the hell is wrong with you!?”

“Sorry,” Caboose said sadly. “I didn’t know she was going to be mean. I thought she wanted to be our friend.”

Simmons let out a huff, then drew in a breath as if to speak, but was cut off by the synthetic overhead voice chiming, _“Preparation process complete. Lockdown sequence initiated.”_

There was the sound of machinery, and then the two doors which had been open since the three entered the room that led to the catwalk began to shut.

“ _Shit!_ ” Grif yelped. “Guys, _move!_ ”

The three darted for the doors with Grif at their front, but wound up colliding when he backpedalled suddenly just in time to avoid a rocket that shot past them. It hit the receivers that protruded from the ceiling, and the chamber was showered with sparks.

Simmons shook his head to try to clear it, untangling himself from the others, and looked up just as the marine dropped the rocket launcher that must have been holstered on her back, and started towards them.

“Shit, shit, shit!” he hissed, grabbing for his gun. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Grif do the same. He didn’t have time to draw it however, as the marine reached him before he could and kicked it out of his hand before hoisting him up by the front of his chestplate and lifted him several inches off the ground.

“Brave move, little man,” she snarled. “Too bad it was for nothing.”

And then Simmons’ world pitched backwards suddenly as she threw him off the catwalk. He heard Grif scream his name, and then the back of his head was struck with a blinding pain and everything went dark.

 

* * *

 

“You think they’ll be alright?” Carolina looked over when she heard Wash speak.

“You’re _worried_ about them?”

“I’m worried about _Fox,_ ” Wash corrected. “She doesn’t know what she’s dealing with. I’m worried Locus will ditch her first chance he gets, or kill her.”

“Fair enough,” Carolina said with a nod, and turned her attention back to the hall they were jogging through, “but I don’t think we need to worry about him killing her.”

“Why’s that?”

“What good would it do him? The only accessible ships are at the outpost we came from. He’d just wind up getting cornered,” Carolina explained, rounding the corner into the main passageway.

“Well if he has any sense left in him, maybe you’re right,” Wash said, taking the corner and almost crashing into Carolina, who had come to a sudden stop. “Wh-” he cut off when he turned and looked at what she was looking at.

At the end of the hall, standing under the flickering lights and partially cast in shadow, was a marine.

“Did Fox say anything about this?” Wash hissed.

“No,” Carolina growled, drawing her pistols.

Wash drew his own weapon and stepped away from Carolina as the figure began to approach them.

“Wash,” Carolina hissed under her breath.

Wash glanced towards her. “Boss?”

“I’m not getting any readings.”

Wash was silent for a moment, processing this information. “What do you think it is?”

“I don’t know,” Carolina admitted, then spoke up to the marine, her voice echoing loud and clear over the alarms. “Stand down!”

The marine stopped several yards short of them, then tilted their head. And Wash felt a shiver go down his spine when their neck bent just a _little_ too far to the right, before straightening up with a crackling sound that could be heard over the alarms.

“What the fuck?” Wash breathed.

“Open fire,” Carolina gritted out, sounding unnerved, and started shooting.

Wash did the same, and watched in growing horror as the bullets seemed to do nothing. “Jesus Christ,” he exclaimed, and ceased fire. Carolina did the same, but held her pistols steady.

The marine remained standing, some sort of dark fluid oozing out of their wounds and dripping onto their black and yellow armor. They tilted their head downwards, surveying the damage, then looked back out and said, “well that was rude.”

“Who are you?” Carolina snapped.

“Doesn’t matter,” the marine replied. “I’m just going to kill you. You don’t need my name.”

Wash heard Carolina let out a frustrated growl, and then there was a hole in the opposing marine’s visor. He stumbled backwards, emitting a sound like a speaker that had just been doused in water.

Carolina holstered her pistols, darted forward and slammed a hard fist into the marine’s midsection, then followed it with a roundhouse kick to the side of his head which sent him to the floor, the remains of his visor scattering across the ground. She grabbed one of her pistols and pointed it at him, but recoiled in sudden horror when the marine turned his head to look at her, and she saw what was in his helmet.

The shriveled, distorted face of a corpse - rotting flesh made slick from years of moisture trapped with no escape in a kevlar and carbon fiber coffin - stared out at her and Wash. The marine raised himself to his feet, a chuckle emerging from him despite the lack of movement in his decaying muscles. “What’s the matter? You’re not chickening out on me, are you?”

And then he lunged with impossible speed for Carolina, who scrambled backwards, firing off round after round with no avail. The marine knocked one of her pistols out of her hand with a hard kick to her shoulder, and as she recovered, grabbed her by the throat and pinned her against the wall.

Carolina struggled, black spots dancing in front of her vision. She clawed at the hand around her throat and kicked at the marine’s shins. And then suddenly, with a crack, the marine’s head snapped forward at an odd angle, and his grip on Carolina went slack. She scrambled away from him and looked over at Wash, who had apparently swung his gun at the marine like a baseball bat.

“You okay, boss?” he asked.

Carolina nodded, rubbing her throat, backing towards where she had dropped her pistol, eyes never leaving the marine, who was now leaning against the wall like a malfunctioned android. She noted the angle that his head was at, realizing with a slight sickening feeling that Wash must have hit him in the weak spot at the base of his helmet; causing the power armor to overcompensate and rip his head clean off.

“I think we’re done here,” she said, retrieving her pistol and walking back to join Wash’s side, wincing as she spoke.

Wash handed her the other pistol, which she must have dropped without realizing when she was pinned against the wall. She took it and holstered it, then turned and said, “we should keep moving and warn the others.”

Wash nodded and turned with her. “I’ll let them know-”

Both froze when they heard the sound of crackling bone behind them, and slowly turned back towards the source.

The marine had pulled himself away from the wall, and was adjusting his head with his hands, rotten blood oozing out of his helmet. “I don’t think you will,” he said, reaching and pulling a machine gun off of his back. “Let’s have another go, shall we?”

 

* * *

 

“This is fine,” Donut said, leaning back against the wall and surveying the damage that he, Tucker, and Sarge had done to the station. At some point, Sarge had found several tanks of petroleum, and now everything was on fire.

“It’s more than fine, Donut! It’s a masterpiece!” Sarge exclaimed, looking at the scene before him with his head raised proudly and his hands on his hips.

Donut watched as a severely damaged turret a little ways behind him sparked and fell from the ceiling. “It could use more glitter,” he criticized.

“Hmph,” Sarge said. “ _Simmons_ would appreciate my work.”

“There you guys are!” Donut looked over when he heard Tucker speak, and watched as he walked over to them, the pipe he had been using as a makeshift melee weapon held loosely in one hand.

“Where’d you run off to, Blue?” Sarge asked. “Didja get too scared to join in all the fun?”

“Ha _ha_ ,” Tucker said sarcastically, kicking a fallen turret. “I found the room where all the security feeds were hooked up and figured it was important enough to take care of.”

“Huh,” Sarge said. “Guess you _do_ have some brain cells in that helmet of yours after all!”

“We should get going,” Donut piped up. “Fox said the killcode was entered, which means our job is done for now.”

“Yeah,” Tucker agreed. “It’s getting a little hot in here, even for my taste.”

The three started down the hall, stepping over wreckage as they went. Donut kept his ears pricked, still uneasy about the voice they had heard before. It had gone silent minutes ago, but something still didn’t feel quite right about the whole thing. Sure Tucker had said that he took down the security feeds, but he couldn’t help but shake the feeling that they were being watched.

They reached a small staircase that would lead them into the hall where the elevator back to the main level was. But before either Sarge or Tucker could step onto it, Donut called out, “wait!”

Tucker froze, his foot still in the air, and looked back over his shoulder at Donut. “What’s wrong?”

“Something’s not right,” Donut replied, feeling the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

“It’s just the heat gettin’ to your head, boy,” Sarge dismissed, brushing past Tucker and starting down the stairs. “See? We’re fine-”

Sarge barely stepped off the last step when one of the wall panels shot out and slammed into him, throwing him onto the floor.

“Oh shit!” Tucker shouted, and ran down the stairs to his aid. Donut charged after him, and together the two lifted the wall panel off of Sarge, who was swearing profusely underneath.

“Son of a bitch, no good- _you!_ ” Sarge’s angry mumbling turned into a full on shout as he pointed a finger in the direction the panel had flown at him from.

Tucker and Donut turned and found themselves staring at a gangly marine climbing out of the new hole in the wall.

Tucker drew his sword and got into a fighting stance, barking out, “who the fuck are you?!”

“It’s always the same question,” came the icy reply. Donut felt his skin crawl at the synthetic nature of the marine’s voice.

Sarge scrambled to his feet and raised his shotgun. Donut raised his own weapon too, eyes never leaving the marine.

“You’re about to get the beatin’ of a lifetime!” Sarge snarled.

The marine stared at him for a moment, then let out a horrible laugh. “That’s what you think!” he exclaimed, and charged.

Donut had no time to react before he was grabbed by his chestplate and thrown into Sarge. “Sorry!” he exclaimed, scrambling off, looking up sharply as Tucker let out a yell and saw a knife sticking out of his shoulder.

Donut scrabbled to his feet and slammed the marine in the face with the butt of his machine gun as he turned his head. The marine stumbled backwards, but then lunged again with a knife in his hand, only to lose his balance when Sarge grabbed his leg to trip him. The marine hit the floor, and immediately twisted around, rising into a crouch to face Sarge, who by now was on his feet and pointing his shotgun into his opponent’s face.

“Gotcha!” he cried triumphantly, and pulled the trigger.

Donut watched as the marine jerked backwards, and then collapsed, laying still.

Sarge chuckled. “All in a day’s work! See? Nothin’ to worry about, Donut!”

Donut let out a nervous giggle, staring back at the marine. “Sure thing, Sarge.”

Sarge gave him a nod of approval, and walked over to check on Tucker, who had pulled the knife out of his shoulder and had a hand over the wound to try to control the bleeding. Donut watched him, and jumped when he suddenly heard Fox’s voice over comms;

“This is Fox with an important update to the situation. It seems CORA has taken control of the power armor of some of my teammates and might try to attack you with them. Be on a lookout for them, and be careful while fighting them if you are forced to engage. They won’t go down as easily as a living soldier. Aim for the head. That’s your best bet at taking them down. Stay safe guys.”

Donut listened intently, glancing over at his teammates as he did so. They all seemed to be receiving the same message.

“Huh, won’t go down easily,” Sarge scoffed. Then switched to a private channel. Judging by what Donut could hear, he was talking to Fox. “Just took one of the sons of bitches down,” he said, turning back to Tucker.

Donut flipped the safety back on his weapon and dusted himself off, listening as Sarge said, “yeah, shot the bastard right through the head- Eh?” Donut looked up when Sarge got suddenly quiet, and then said, “well why in Sam hill would I waste a perfectly good grenade when he’s already…” Sarge trailed off as he turned his head and looked pointedly back towards where the marine was laying behind Donut. “I’m gonna have t’call you back,” he said suddenly, right as Tucker burst out, “ _Donut!”_

“Wha-?” Donut turned just in time to catch a hard kick to the side of the head. He stumbled backwards, bringing his gun up as a makeshift shield as the marine charged him and slammed him into the wall. Donut felt the air leave his lungs as the wind was knocked out of him. He heard Sarge fire his shotgun and shout a challenge, and looked up with black-spotted vision as the marine turned and lunged at him, momentum barely breaking as his side was torn open by one of Sarge’s shells.

The marine knocked Sarge’s gun out of his hand and doubled him over with an elbow jab to the abdomen. The marine then delivered a hard tornado kick to the older man’s chest, flooring him, before he turned and rounded on Tucker, who had begun to creep around the outskirts of the skirmish to try to get an advantage.

The marine aimed a hard kick at Tucker’s injured shoulder, then dodged backwards with an expert backflip when the other man swung his sword at him. “You should have died in that crash,” he said, circling Tucker. “I’ll make you wish that you had.”

“Man, shut the fuck up,” Tucker growled. Then lunged, driving his sword through the marine’s shoulder. The marine jerked away, separating his arm from his body as he did so, rotting blood spattering across the floor as he stumbled back.

He tried to reverse his momentum, but was thrown off balance when Donut suddenly tackled him, wrapping his arms around his back and forcing the marine to piggyback him while shouting, “Tucker, I got him! I got him!”

Realizing that Donut was giving him an opening, he stepped forward, leaning out of the way of the marine’s useless flailing attempts to dislodge his captor, and grabbed his opponent’s chestplate, forcing him to face him. “How’s your foot taste, asshole?” Tucker snarled, and jammed his sword through the marine’s helmet.

The marine let out a garbled sound and went suddenly stiff, then collapsed to the floor under Donut’s weight.

Donut scrambled to his feet, shaking his head, and exclaimed, “a warning would have been nice!”

“Dude, the one-liner _was_ the warning!” Tucker said, trying to keep the relief he felt when he saw the other man was alright out of his voice.

“Yep, I’m fine. No need to worry about me,” Sarge grumbled a little ways away, dragging himself to his feet.

“You weren’t sleeping on the job, were you?” Tucker teased.

“Hmph, as if I’d stoop as low as that lazy sum-bitch Grif,” Sarge snorted.

“But seriously, you’re alright?” Tucker asked, all humor gone from his voice. Donut couldn’t help but feel a little surprised by his concern.

“Fine, fine,” Sarge said, waving him away when he approached. “Just a bit winded s’all.”

“That was too close,” Donut said, looking back at the marine’s body, feeling nausea creep up on him when his eyes feel on the stump where the man’s arm used to be. He looked back at Tucker and Sarge. “You think the others will be okay?”

Sarge and Tucker exchanged a look. “I sure hope so, Donut,” Tucker said, retracting the plasma blade on his sword and looking away. “I hope so.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HUGE thank you to mantisbelle on tumblr dot com for helping me figure out how to get the font to work for CORA’s dialogue. I would have been stuck making image files of all the stuff she says if it wasn’t for them. Thank you!!!! ^w^
> 
> They expected a bad time, but no one ever counted on fucking zombies. 
> 
> For reference on what they're voices might sound like, think of that one Doctor Who episode, “Silence in The Library”.
> 
> Finding out that power armor could theoretically be controlled remotely was probably one of the best things to ever happen to me.  
> Yes CORA is using meshed together soundbites for each of the marines. Creepy little monster.  
> You know that tag, “frisbee murder”? Yeah, that’s what it was referring to. It’s literally just a big old retractable frisbee and I’m sorry about nothing.
> 
> Simmons is fine don’t worry he’s just taking a nap.
> 
> Also, Fox’s old teammates who are currently locked in combat with our favorite rainbow babies have names! Grif, Simmons, and Caboose are fighting Kylah “Rosie” Mallows, Carolina and Wash are fighting James “Buzz” Campbell, and Sarge, Tucker, and Donut are fighting Nicholas “Oreo” Howell. Yes, they all have nicknames. Yes they all came from Fox. Yes James is called “Buzz” because he has black and yellow armor. Yes Nick has black and white armor and is named for such. No Fox will never be sorry about her terrible, terrible, nicknames.
> 
> Also, for those who have never taken a martial arts form or really know much about martial arts, a tornado kick is one of those where you spin to gain momentum before delivering a roundhouse kick. You can really put any kick at the end of a tornado kick, but roundhouses work the best in my experience. Def worth a Google search if you’re interested, because they actually look pretty cool!


	8. Hard Reset

“No. No way. That was supposed to work. That _has_ to work,” Fox exclaimed, the desperation in her voice growing as her fingers ran over the keyboard on the control panel. CORA watched her silently, her green optic burning into her.

Locus watched his companion work feverishly to counteract whatever CORA had done to render the killcode useless. It didn’t make sense, he thought, AI’s were smart, sure, but they were nothing but sentient lines of code at the end of the day. He didn’t understand how one would be able to simply brush aside a program designed to destroy it. CORA was a computer. The killcode was a virus. It should have _worked._

“Every simulation. In every simulation it fucking _worked._ Why- I don’t-” Locus didn’t like the way his chest got tight when he heard her voice break. He didn’t like the way something inside of him knotted up when he saw how Fox’s shoulders rounded as she folded into herself. He didn’t like how he almost, _almost_ felt sorry for her.

_You are a weapon, and weapons don’t feel._

He shook his head to clear it, trying to drive out any thoughts, any emotions. They had a job to do. He looked up at CORA, who continued to fix Fox in a burning gaze, and felt something like resentment build up inside of him.

He could be getting help right now. He could be making things right.

“You said there was another way to do this,” he said, and out of the corner of his eye watched how Fox jumped and looked over at him.

“I- Y-yes. The manual way. But I-”

“Then that’s what we need to do,” he said, turning his head to look at her.

“It’s not that simple,” Fox said, glancing back at CORA. “The tertiary power core is located _above_ her. There’s no easy way to get there, and I doubt she’s just going to let us climb up.”

Locus was about to reply when CORA spoke, her voice echoing through the chamber, ** “why are you so _desperate_ to kill me? Don’t you know you’ll always fail?”** Locus watched as her optic slid down the rail in the middle of the mechanism, stopping when it was level with him and Fox. The optic turned towards him, and Locus felt his grip tighten involuntarily around the sword in his hand. **“Don’t you know what she is? A murderer. Isn’t that funny? You’re helping a _murderer_ get what she wants.”** CORA paused, and Locus couldn’t help but get the vague sense that she was seeing _through_ him. **“Then again, you’re just murderer too. You’re _perfect_ for each other.”**

“Locus.” He looked over when he heard Fox say his name. “You should go. You’ll only get hurt if you stay while I try to shut her down.”

 _Just go. Just go before she changes her mind. This is your chance._ And for a second, for a _split_ second, Locus almost considered it. _Almost._ But then he said, “your odds of success will only decrease if I leave,” and he felt that ugly thing in the back of his head grow angrier, but he pushed it back.

“But you could die!” Fox exclaimed.

And Locus couldn’t help but be taken aback by that, because why would she care? What did it matter if he died? CORA was right about him, he _was_ a murderer, and from what Fox told him, she knew that already. Why would she ever care about what happened to _him?_ “Don’t worry about me,” he replied, his voice tense.

Fox began to reply, but CORA cut her off, saying, ** “it seems the little _bug_ has made up his mind.”**

And Locus watched in horrified fascination as she leaned _forward_ ; the mechanism she was attached to extending from the wall. He looked over and took a step back when the appendages that had reached towards the control panel moved as well, raising up like the arms of a praying mantis. **“And I,”** CORA said, slamming one of the appendages down on the walkway they had crossed to reach the control station, **“have made up _mine._ ”**

 

* * *

 

Carolina ducked as the marine swiped at her with a knife in his hand, doubling back and watching from a distance as Wash engaged her opponent. He fired several bullets into the marine’s visor before he was knocked back. Carolina lunged for him and threw him against the wall before he could go after Wash.

The marine stumbled forward, then pulled an alien-looking gun off of his hip and fired it at Carolina. She ducked out of the way, sliding in Wash’s direction and pulling him to his feet before she darted towards the marine. She felt a bullet graze her shoulder, but didn’t break her momentum as she leapt up into a flying kick and put her foot through the place where the marine’s visor used to be. She then flipped backwards, landing and turning and watching as the marine pulled himself out of the indentation he had made in the wall when she kicked him.

“Jesus fuck, why won’t he just _die?_ ” Wash exclaimed breathlessly. “Again,” he added after a moment.

“Fox said to use melee weapons and aim for the head,” Carolina said. “I don’t understand why it isn’t working.”

“Uh, maybe it’s not just the head?” Wash suggested, eyeing the marine as he stumbled forward. He stepped forward and grabbed his gun off the floor and handed it to Carolina.

“The helmet,” Carolina said with sudden realization. And then, “you still good with a knife?”

“You know me, boss,” Wash replied.

“Good, wait for an opening,” Carolina instructed, then darted forward. She caught the marine in the throat with a hard punch, and then landed a roundhouse kick to his side that sent him staggering back. She then whirled, aiming to gain extra momentum for an elbow jab, but was knocked backwards suddenly by a blow to her chest. The marine was on her in an instant, delivering a hard blow to the side of her helmet, and then kicking her again in the chest, sending her to the floor. This time, when his foot connected, Carolina felt something snap before her collar on the left side was flooded with pain. She tried to scramble upright, but a foot planted on her chest kept her down. She watched with a mixture of fear and frustration as the marine leaned down towards her, raising a knife up with the intention of sending it through her visor. He brought the knife down suddenly, and Carolina turned her head to the side in a last-ditch effort to save herself.

But the pain she was expecting never came.

Slowly, she turned her head and stared into the rotting face of the marine. It took her a moment to register that Wash was standing behind him, with a knife jammed into the weak spot at the back of the marine’s helmet.

“ _Wash-_ ” she began, wiping rotten blood off of her visor as she dragged herself out from under the corpse.

“Found an opening,” Wash said in that voice that was a mix of nerves and humor that he used whenever someone just had a close call. He let the marine drop and held out the hand that wasn’t covered in bodily fluids to pull her to her feet. “You alright?”

“Better now that that’s over,” Carolina said, nodding at the corpse. “We should get moving. That fight lasted too long, and if what Fox said over comms was true, the others might need our help.” With that, she started off down the hall in the direction they were initially heading.

Wash caught up with her, and something about how he was holding himself piqued Carolina’s interest. “Alright, what’s up?”

“Nothing,” Wash said, “I just think it’s kinda funny that we just fought a zombie, is all.”

Carolina stared at him a moment, then looked away, a chuckle escaping her as she shook her head and said “you’re ridiculous.”

 

* * *

 

“This is fucking _ridiculous!_ ” Grif screeched as he dove out of the way of a rocket. “We crash land on a stupid moon-” he ducked as the marine threw a punch at him, causing her to slam her fist into the wall instead. “We wind up sharing a fuckin space bunker with _Locus_ -” he sidestepped as the marine picked up the now ammo-less rocket launcher and threw it at him. “We have to go on some stupid _fucking_ mission to stop an evil AI-” he whirled and put his fist through the marine’s visor. “And now we’re fighting fucking _zombies?!_ ” He watched as the marine stumbled back, then reached over and tore a panel off the wall, throwing it at him. “I hate my life,” Grif said decisively, dropping to the ground.

“Aw, Grif, don’t be so mad!” Caboose exclaimed.

Grif had to resist the urge to strangle him. Instead he turned and fired a few rounds into the marine, watching with a mixture of fear and frustration as they only slowed her down for a second.

His fear only heightened when the synthetic overhead voice said, _“flooding chamber.”_

Grif glanced over his shoulder at where Simmons had fallen. The man lay limp at the base of the power core, his head propped up against its metal rim. “Come on, wake up,” Grif hissed, watching with a rising sensation of panic as the panels on the wall closest to the floor slid away and water began pouring out.

The sound of cracking bone and a yowl of pain drew his attention back to the fight. Caboose was stumbling backwards away from the marine, his arm pressed against his side. “That was mean!” he whimpered, his back hitting the wall.

The marine advanced on him, hands balled into fists, dark sludge dripping out from under her helmet and onto her black and pink armor.

Grif glanced at Caboose, then back at Simmons, then to the floor in front of him where the panel the marine had thrown at him lay bent at nearly a right angle, and made a choice. “Hey, you dumb bitch!” he shouted, climbing unsteadily up onto the railing of the catwalk.

The marine turned her head towards him slowly.

“Yeah, you,” Grif said, wobbling slightly. “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?”

“Like you?” the marine asked advancing towards him, and Grif could’ve sworn she sounded amused.

“Yeah, like me!” Grif shouted. Then over a private channel to Caboose said, “I need you to get her on that panel on the floor when I say ‘now’, got it?”

“Okay!” Caboose replied, very much not over comms.

The marine glanced back at him, so Grif shot her in the shoulder to get her attention. “Eyes on me you fuckin creep!” he growled.

The marine snapped her head back towards him and lunged so suddenly that Grif barely had time to splutter out, “now, Caboose! _NOW!_ ”

Caboose hit the marine like a train and splayed her out on the panel. Grif shouted, “here goes nothing!” and belly-flopped onto the part of the panel that stuck upwards. The marine shot through the air and struck the reactor with a gurgling shriek, the energy silhouetting her against blinding white light, and then she collapsed limply, landing in the rising water with a splash next to Simmons.

Grif crawled over to the edge of the catwalk, peering down, noticing with relief that Simmons was beginning to stir.

“Oh... _fuck_ ….what happened?” he mumbled, raising his head, a hand going to the back of his neck. When he looked over and saw the body of the marine beside him, he let out a yelp, splashing away, then glanced around in horror at the rising water around him.

 _“Reactor overload imminent. Initiating disaster protocol,”_ the synthetic voice chimed. A different alarm started blaring immediately after.

“Simmons! Get to the ladder!” Grif yelled down.

“No _shit!_ ” Simmons shouted back, standing up on unsteady feet, the water nearly at waist-level. He splashed over to the ladder, scrambling up the rungs.

There was a rumble as a tremor shook through the chamber, and Simmons clung to the ladder for dear life, looking back at the reactor as it began to glow hotter and hotter. “Oooooh fuck that!” he gasped, and scurried the rest of the way up, taking Grif’s offered hand and letting himself be pulled onto the catwalk.

“We need to go _right now_!” Grif shouted over the roar of the reactor as it began to malfunction. He turned and made for the exit, shouting, “Caboose, let’s go!”

Caboose turned from where he was gazing over the edge of the catwalk and started after him, exclaiming “coming!”

The three charged through the doors to the chamber and raced down the hall, struggling to keep their balance as the tremors that wracked through the structure became more and more frequent. Rounding a corner, the three nearly ran into Tucker, Sarge, and Donut, skidding to a halt right in front of them.

“What in Sam hill is going on!” Sarge exclaimed.

Grif bent forwards, hands on his knees, wheezing, but jerked a thumb back over his shoulder in the direction they had come. Simmons, who was equally out of breath managed to gasp out, “reactor. Meltdown. We gotta go.”

“Yeah, we might’ve maybe broken it,” Caboose added.

“You _what?!_ ’ Tucker exclaimed.

Neither of the three had a chance to explain before Wash and Carolina arrived.

“Everyone here?” Carolina asked, glancing around.

“Everyone but Fox and Locus,” Tucker replied.

“I’ll try to reach them,” Wash said, switching to comms. “Fox? Can you read me?”

“What did you _DO?!_ ” came the angry reply.

“I-” Wash looked back towards the rest of the group, fixating on Simmons when he heard him begin to speak on the channel too.

“Power core meltdown. One of those...zombie... _things_ attacked us and-”

“-And I threw her into the reactor,” Grif finished, also on comms.

Fox was silent for a moment, then said in a low, serious voice. “You need to get out, _right now._ ”

“What, and leave you?!” Tucker exclaimed over the channel.

“For fuck’s sake, this isn’t time to be heroes. Just get the fuck out of the station. If the primary core is about to collapse, this whole structure could come down. You’re just wasting time arguing with me about it. Get out!” Fox shouted.

“She’s right,” Carolina said, looking around at the others. “These tremors are getting worse. We need to leave.”

“But-” Tucker began.

“This _isn’t_ up for debate!” Carolina snapped, turning and starting in the direction of the exit.

“We can’t just…” Tucker trailed off, gazing back into the bowels of the station. He looked over when he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Wash.

“Look, we’ll figure something out. She’s lasted this long on her own,” he said. Then, “let’s go.”

Tucker stole one last glance backwards, stumbling slightly from another tremor, and hurried after the others.

 

* * *

 

 

“Primary core meltdown,” Fox explained, speaking fast. “We’re running out of time. We need to do this _now!_ ”

Locus leapt out of the way of one of the massive tubes that hung from the ceiling as one of CORA’s appendages sent it crashing down to the floor. “We need to immobilize her,” he replied.

Fox slid past him and lunged right as CORA flung one of her appendages out to meet her. There was a flash of silver and blue, and CORA _screamed_. Locus watched as the limb slid off the edge of the platform, detached from the main mechanism, and fell into darkness.

“Like that?” Fox asked, glancing back at him, reaching up to catch her shield as it arced back towards her.

 **“** _ **YOU!”** _ CORA snarled, and raised her remaining appendage.

Locus ducked under it as she brought it down and slashed at the thick cables dangling under the panel. CORA let out what sounded like a frustrated growl and struggled to lift it again.

“There!” Fox exclaimed, pointing to the appendage. “We can use that to climb up!”

**“No, no, _no!_ ”**CORA exclaimed, beginning to sound desperate as she helplessly watched Fox climb up on top of the limb.

Locus followed her, activating his grav-boots to prevent himself from sliding as the tremors grew worse. He watched as Fox made her way to the top joint of the limb, retracting her shield as she went. She crouched suddenly, and Locus watched with surprise as she leapt across the gap between where she stood and the top of CORA’s mechanism. She didn’t quite make the landing, and instead grabbed onto the edge, activating her grav-boots as she scrambled up, and turning to look back at him.

“Think you can make this jump?” she asked as Locus climbed up to where she had stood. “Don’t worry, if you slip, I’ll catch you,” she added.

But Locus ignored her, running calculations through his head. He crouched, then leapt, and watched in helpless dismay as CORA leaned back, screeching,

 

 

 **I̾͐͂͏͕̲̰̗T̮̻͒͆ͤ̈́̏̐̋̕'̖͊̏̽̿͂ͩͥŞ̼̍̄ ̡͙͉͚̔Á̲̦̓̓̒̎ͣ͟Lͩͦ̓̊̚҉̜̖̤̯̰̞L͕͙ͧ͐ͧ̊̓̍ ̞͕̱̲͓̫̠̿̆ͦͭ͢Y̰̠̔̓͊͒͊Ó͚͙̱̓ͨ͒U̠̱̬̻̲̿ͫͯͅR̫͎͉͇̜̂̔ ̸̭̦̗̠͔̙͙ͦF̌ͣ͜ͅA̺͎̥̿̓̅͒U̩͉͂̍͌ͪͪ͂L̢̻̥̍ͭ̍ͮͮT͚̮ͭͪ̚͝ ͓͍̭̙͗̈́̚͘Y͕͉̙͍̰ͯ̆̈́̇Oͨ͗̇ͭͭU̙̳͚̻̭͖͊̂ ̦̠̺̤̥̠̓ͦͤ̾̚̚͞M̶͙͎̳̫̮ͭO̳ͩ̈́͌ͩͨ͞N̖̎͊̋͒͊̍̆͠S̶̹̯̎͑͋̅̆̏ͅT͇͉̖͉̥̖̉ͅḚ̱͛ͪ̑ͦ̐̑ͫR̨̫͎͙̯̺̠̫ͨ!̵ ̳͕̩̻̻͒͘Y̯̗ͧǪ̞͙̬̎̅U̱̯͇̟͕͙͓̿̋͐̾͠ ̩̰̦͓ͩ͟K̈́̍ͣ͗̑I̫̍ͯ̅͐ͤL͉͇̈́L̷͔̫̪̙̗ͯ̐̔̾͂ͭ̉Ĕ̫͖̮̘̦͕ͩ̈́̔̓ͬD̦̰̍̎̓ ̗̹ͯ̀ͭ̽T͔̹͍̝̝̫̤̈͑ͤͪ̒̊͂H͖̃̾̿̕E͕͕̳͞M̙͔̹̞̗̥͑ͪͨ̾͂ͯ͘!̌͐̋́̌҉̖̟̜͇̼ ̗͚̙͕͎̲̌ͦ̓Y̜͎͖̞͖ͭͯO͔̮Ủ̸ͮ̈́ͧ̍ ̸͌̆̔̐ͧͥL̢̩̓̎̔̒̓Ĕ͓̣̪̖̯̺ͣ̊̀͡T̹̫̲ͫ̓͋ ̢͎̘̪̬̣́͛͂T͚̹̤̯̺͖ͯ̆ͅH̻ͫE͚̬̺̗̋ͤ̌M͎̟̩͈͖̞̙̓͠ ͔͈͓͍̣̽ͯͯ͌D̰̓I̡̭̥̞̳ͫ̐͆̿̎͆̀E̷͎̽̍̍̚!̳͓̙̥̎̃̉̋̃͋͐̕ ̣͎̰͔̯͒̓̎͋ͫ̓T̠̰̔̿H̝̘̩͐̇͟Iͯ̊ͣ͏̪̟̼͇̜̭S̭͚̏͒̎͛ͣͯ ̠̦̖̱̜̇̓͆ͫ͗̔Ī̭̦̙̈̓Ș̫̣ ̣͚̥͖ͪY̸̳̯̣͕̮̩̊ͮ̌Ǒ̗͖͍͇͉̝̘͘U͒̉̽̆͆̓҉̟͇̰̳͚̤̺R͕͙̖͙͊̓ͪ̄ͯ̓͝ ̳͓̘̜̗͖̏̄̄́͌̐ͣF̭͢A͙͆͗͑͆͑͝U̘̩ͭ̓ͫͪ̕Ḽ̣̈́ͪ̀̏͋͝T̺͓̻̩ͫ͊̀̄ͯ̀,̻̬͞ ̮̤̤̩͉̩̱̄ͭ́ͦ̚͞Y͇̅ͮ̆̾O̯̼͕̹͆̃U̩̙̝͔͓͒ ͞C͕̺̼͇͓͍̤̀̔͗̇O̰͍͓̠͖ͤͪ̍ͬ͒ͫ̉͞W͍͙̲̻̟͕ͨ̈ͨͧͬ̿ͪA̪͇͔̼͚̽͒̓͒R͙̤̮͊̂́D̡̳͙̤̮͈̀!̪͕̭͉̻̫ͮ̒̂ ̲̦̠̩͖͉͡I̼͎̰ͭͫ͑̇ͥ̓̿ ̼̟̊ͨͪ̑̅̐͊T̶̗̙͕̱̖̹̘R̘͇̭̲̒͐̓̇ͪ͗ͅU̦̮̬ͮ̍S̗̞͈̯͔ͣͥ̉̕T̠͆̎͢Ẻ̮̪͍̥̘̿ͥͨD͍̿̑̇ͩ ̾̈̏Ȳ̖͈̲̫̾͗ͅO̴̍̔ͥ̏̆͑͗Ù̝̖̰̞̦̥̥ͪ!̧̃** **_͙͎Ė̯̳̆ͅṾ͂ͯͯͩͩ̓E͙̮̬͎̰̦͛Ȓ̜̝̘̈̄̐ͅY̴͕͔̋̏̑̔̎̽̍O̽ͯ̿̈͆N͉͕͚̰E̲̥͕̟͖̽̅̊_ ** **͔̀ͬͪͭͅT̤͖̳͇̦̺̍ͦ̏ͤͤR̸͎̖̲͈͋̿̒̐Ṵ̱̏S̝̭̞͖͖̠͒̅̔T͔̺͍̬̍͟Ě̢͖͉͎͍͖̉ͨD͕͈̳̮̦̘̥͋̒ ̢̰͕̬̠̿̍̃ͧͬY̠̲̰̤̿̏͢O̻̒ͯͫ̒̒̑́U̸̬̟̟̲̿͑!̳̺͎̺̰̹̑ͮ̏ͬ͗̈́̚ ̓ͫ̇̄̚̚W̙͖̘͌ͩ͢E̻̘͕̤̫͆ͣ͜ ̛̭̊͒W̡̗̣̱͚͕̎ͩ̉Ẹ̴̈́̒R͚̻̱̖͛̓ͥ̓̓͆E͎̳͓̗̩̟̐̐̔ͧ͆̔ ̶͂A͖̔͘ ̯̻͚͑̆͂ͨ̋͝T̩̘͇̟̑̂̈́̅̒È͓̬̹̭̦̪̄̑ͅAͦͣ͝ͅM͑̆̔ͯͭ͆̕!ͦ͊ͪ̇̊ͩ ͚̝͓̺̿ͦͣ̕W̩͓ͧ̓̂͢E͇̱̩̥̙͉̝̒͑ͫ́̕ ͓̆̊̈B͚ͤE̶̟͓̹̥̰ͭ̄̏̚L̢̖̰̖̚I̪̬̝ͪ̓͘Ě̈́̽̍̓̓̃҉̯̹V̹̲͎̦͙̺̣̓ͯ̍E͒͌҉̯̝̤̲͓̠̼D̸̝̱̺̝̣ͭ͋͗̈ ̷͈̝̾̾̐ͦͮI̼͍̼̞̣͖Ñ̛̆̽ ̖̦͖̯̩̼̌̀̋͢O̜̺̬͠N̫̖̥̗͔̰̗͌͂́̕E͂̔͢ ̪̹͓̰͙̭ͪͪ̊A̖̘̻̩̞̳͆͒̆ͣͅÑ̛̝̗͉̥O͊T̐͂H̜͚̤̻̠͔̆ͯͯ͂ͮͥͫ͢E̹͈̣̲̭ͦͣ͒͆Ṛ̵̳̖͖̯̾̆͆͛ͪͦ̒!̌͏̩̠̲ ̙̥͕͈͕̏ͫ̎͑͟Y̡͔͉̅ͮ̄̅ͬO͉̜̰̘̼ͮ̒͜Ư̥̮̮̪͓̦̻̎ͬ͋͛̌'̗̩͇̙̝͚̯ͤ̿͛͋R͌̓ͨͭͣ̚E̞̗͙̟̬ͥ̆̃ͮ̅ͭ̓ ͍͚̘̇ͩ̉̈͐̆Aͫ̌ͬ͏̹ ̳̙͔̙̭̆ͫ͞C̻̠̮͖̟̰ͧ͂̇͆͛O̵̼̝̱̖̬̍ͬ͋W͍̝͚͔͕͊͢A͈ͮ̄ͯ̚R͙̠̗ͯͭ͂͝D̙͚͛!͜ ̳̻ͣ̄̑̀̐ͯ̓͠Ą̱̗͋̏̆ͥ ̱̳̜̠̥ͬͯ͢** **_C̭̮͔͖O̾ͦͪ͐ͪͫ̉W̵ͨͥǍ̘̥̘͒ͩ͊̈́R̛̦̫̋̒̈́͐͐̂͐D̨̉ͧͫ̀ͯ̚!͙͚̞̭̲͑ͤ̒̄͒̓_ ** **̸͆̿̅̇͒͂I̫̝͠ ̯̜̰̘́ͭ͋U̼̳̱̪ͫ̃̂ͬ̑ͩ̄S̄͗҉͕ͅẸ̤̹̇̍ͩ̌͟D̤͚̠̏̌̑ ͇̯̬͓T̟͖͇̪̭̮̯̑ͤ͌̓͘O̰̣̦̺͇̙̾̆̇ͪ̈͝ ̼̟̟ͭL̛̤͐ͭ̇̎͐̄O̫͐O̟̎͆̾ͮ̊̾̓K ͓̮͍̽̓͞U̺͍̫̲̞ͬͩͩ̌̾̔͘P̥ͤͥ̎ ̘̞̥͇̳̼̞ͥ̊̓T̗̥̭̯̤̹͚ͦ̌O̞̳ͣ ̂͊ͩͥ̎̆ͪ҉͙̝Y̙̗͖̳̲̮ͦ̀ͨͅÕ̪̥͠Uͤ̋҉̪͕̬͙̳̤,̈̒ͭͬͣ͏̗͕͚ ̞̪̃ͅY͉͙̎͌͆ͮ̄̑ͯ͜O̹͉͚̯̎̈̈͋ͣỤ͙̲ͭ ̖̫̳͕̂ͨͮͭ̈͜ͅM̙̗͈̫̟ͪͭͤO̱̣͇̖̯̝͈̐̋̃ͥͮͮ͑Nͨ͆͗̾̈́S̰̝͇̜̲̑͘T̼͖̙̙͌̒̂͂ͪͬE̵͚̹̲̫̦̻̪ͯ͋̔ͮ͌̆R̈ͭ̃͏̫̳̳!̳͎̣ͫ̈͡ ̗̍ͨ̏ͮͭ͘D̖̺͝I̠̲̮͔ͩ͒̒̑͒Ê̗ͦͬ͑͂ͩ͜!̗̥͔̠͎ͧͨ̏ ̯̗ͣ̒̽̈̓ͧͯḎ̳̞̬̑͆ͮI̵̜͚̯̳̮̣̳͂͛̓͆̐ͤ̾E̘͚͑̌͡!͉̥͕̠̃ ͈̠̗̮̤̞̏̂** **_D̜̹͕͉̊ͩ̔̕I̵̖̬̹͇̒ͦ̓̈E̴͈̼̽̽!͛͐͋́͆ͬ͗͡_ **

 

 

He hit the side of the mechanism, but before he could fall further, he felt a hand grab his. He looked up and saw Fox leaning over the edge.

“Told you,” she said, but any teasing note in her voice was overshadowed by tension.

 _Don’t rub it in_ , he thought bitterly, using his grav-boots to help him scale the mechanism and reach where she was. Once he was in front of her, she nodded back the way they had come and Locus turned and made out the form of an overhead platform amongst the tubes and machinery.

“You first,” she said.

Locus glanced back at her, then made the jump, feeling slightly relieved when he felt both feet plant on its surface. He didn’t have time to look back at Fox before she was by his side and already running ahead. He followed her, keeping an eye on CORA’s glaring green optic as it followed their every movement.

Fox led him up a short flight of stairs and around a corner, onto a circular platform right above where the control station was. Peering through the mesh flooring, Locus watched as CORA managed to slide her injured limb off the platform, dangling it below her.

“Fox,” he warned.

“I see it,” Fox replied, and Locus looked over at her.

She was standing before a large, round machine that emerged from the center of the platform. It emitted a hum loud enough to be heard over the alarms, and the lights across its surface flickered with every tremor. Fox was typing something into a dusty monitor, deep in concentration. She was silent for only a moment, before saying, “there’s a big cable across from where I’m standing on the other side of this thing. Do me a solid and go stand by it.”

Locus did so, watching as Fox’s typing speed increased. The machine let out a beeping alarm, and the lights on it flickered red.  A sudden tremor wracked through the structure, and Locus found himself looking back down towards CORA, and realized with a sinking feeling that she was thrashing around beneath them, trying to shake them away from the power core.

 

 

 **Ĩ͏̞ ̖͖̩ͨ͛̃ͮ̓̋͟L̨͇̜̞͙͔̥̽͑ͣͮ̂O̯͙͖͚̰͗ͮͮ̌̇V̨͙̔̒̔͐̋E͙̙̻ͬḎ̲̥̱̪ ͖̮̥̝̣͖͑̄ͭͮ̋͟Y̹̙͎Oͩ͞U̞̟̮̠͍̟͋ͪ̌̒͜!̫̻̳ͩͯ͋̓ ̠̳͎ͭͪ̀͋̑Î̞̝͖̻ͯ͐ ̵͒̈́̔ͮ̐ͮͧL̜̩̻ͩ̅̈O̭̝̳̮̲͍͒̿̍̽ͪ̃V̠͉̠̜͚͓̆̐̈́̀ͯ̿E̯͈̪̪͌ͧ̍͒ͨ͊̂Ḏ̈́̅̐͒̆͋͡ ̦ͫ̐̈́Yͥͦ̂͋̅O̰̘̜͌Û̖̗̘̩̘̼̤̔̌̂͆̓,͙̖̏̔͆ͪͅ ̻͕̫̂ͭ͂̏ͅAͮNͭ̕D͚͔͈̠͕ͩ ̟ͭ̑** **_T͉̝̝̥͍̥͉̊̃H̛͕̟̭̭͇̦̙̅̽̈́I͓̜̤̥ͮ̉̓Ṣ̣̖͐̄̏_ ** **̩̖̿ͧ̌͞Ǐ̶̯͕̣̦̯͍ͪ̔̓ͫ̑̇S͖̻̠͙̝̰ͥͣ͌͝ ̮̻̳̲͎̙ͭW̳̬̱̬̙͎͔ͨ͋͝H̬̪A͓̥̜̩̘̫̯͋̅̏ͪT̙͆ ͖̣ͭ́Ÿ̳̗͎͓̖̮́̿̚Oͪͤ̍ͪ҉̙̲͇̼̫̹̱U̸̦̞͇̼ͣͮ̚ ̥͇͇̝̇̌̃͂͗̉ͅD̮͉̻̟̦̳͔̈ͩȌ͏̘͓͓̠͈ ̷͍͈̼T̡̯͉͈͚̻̖̽͌̌ͬͤ̍ͤȎ ̗͚̟̹̣͕̃̓̾M̦̪ͤ̈́͛͑ͯ̋̃E͓͎͔͇̬͇̪ͨ̑̓͘!̝͇̫̦ͣ̆?̼̗̣̫̺̲ͭ ̵͈͙͎̉̌̎̂ͨH̥͖̮̦͉̙̀ͩ̈ͯͧ͌O̸̼͇͙̙̟W͉̩͇̣͓͈ͧ̄̅̎̎͛ ͍̭̻͖͔ͬ** **_C̟͍͉͎̳͘Ŏ̪̬͖̫̘̭̯ͥ͘Ụ̭̑́ͣL̮͍̘ͮͬ̃͡D̜͖̞̠͚̓ͨ̄́_ ** **̗͛́̉Y̦̺̬̰̓̽Ó̸͚ͦ̒Ŭ̬̼͔͖͚͡ͅ?ͥ!̻͚̺̠̤̳̪̉͑͌͒̆ ͙̻̔ͅD̗̮͕̻̫̝̮̑ͤͯI̖̳̬̲͎͖̔ͮ̓̊̕Ḑ̯͇͍̙͇͕͆̀ͭͪͦͅN̘͎ͪ̏ͭ͐͊̍̂'ͣ̋ͨ̓̃̿ͣT͕̦̋̋̉̎ͩ̋ͅ ̼̫̮͉̝̹͗̿ͤ͐̆̑̚Y̝͎̖̹͇͂ͨ͒͗̄O̡̳͋̀̎͐Ù̥͔̥̠̭̳̱͆̆̑̔ͫ͝ ͚̫͚̺͈̄̍ͨ̚L͕̰̱̪̃̓̉͂O̗̻͓ͥ͞V̧̘̞͕̹̪̤ͧͦ͋̒̽ͮ̈E̖̋̊̅ͮ̓ ̶͇͕͔̮M͍̿͘E̥͎̩̟̪͖̜̎͂̏̿̿̚ ͎̜͓̻̯́̀T͉̜͙̝̦ͫ̋ͬ͊̇O̳̯̟̞ͬ͒̃͞O͇͛ͩ̀͛̓ͨͧ?͙͚̯͇ͫ͡!̜̣̗̘ͫ̀͞ ̞̺͈̞͚͖̅ͭ͞I̧ ̷͔̘̻̹͚̙̎ͪ̂̒J̩͕͈̑ͨ̐ͭU̠̳̥͉̼̓̆S̖͓͖̘̠͔ͤT̗̲̥͈͜ ̰͍̖̫̤̾́ͪͣͬ̈́̍ͅW̬̜̗͛̏̽͂Ã̗̦̤̖ͪN͈̩̈͊ͪ̒̐̔T̵͖̙͉̭̞̙͇̒͋ͬ̑ͫ̉̓É͇̜̂͑̋̑̆̑D͉̯̱͕̝̓̒̔̂͆̽͠ ̝̪̙̏̔͒̓ͫ̒T͔̘̖̥̙̺ͯ̊̎ͅO̡̪̫̹͙͕̳ͯ̉̊̑̅̃̃ ͖̎̔̒ͬ͡B̿͋̽̑̀͏Ę̭͔͙̙͖ͬ̈̽ͥͅ ̭̤͈̬̆ͯ̄̽ͣ͐A̘̣̣̭̝̗ͮ̀͗̑ͩͥ͒ ͕̂̾ͨ̽Ṗ̴̖̮̖͇ͣA͇͎̘͖̲̼͖̎̏̀̅ͣͯR̮͙ͮͫ̀ͪT̛͕̦͚̤̮̠̒̑ ͫ͂̓̍͢Ő͍͎ͤ͂ͮ̾̀F̻̪̱̙̰̅ͫ͌͗̉̒̾ͅ ͕̗͚W̺̯̲̱̑͘H̠̯̫̬͓͕̆ͥ͆͐̂̃ͅA͈̰ͤ̈͛̔͝T͉̥̩̹̲̿ͪ̅̿̔̎ ͚̦͓̙̗̗̋̇̉̅͊͂ͧY͈̼̼͍̤͖̺̐̕O̶̯̯̩̳̹̯̙̎ͨŲ̲͇̯ ̳̮͘W͖̹̫͚̤̃̒̊ͦ͡ER̗̣̝̤͔̙̓͗͘E̤̞̺͂̿ ͇͕̩ͣ͆̾̅D̟̞̖̙̦ͦ́͌̿Ọ͂̃̐̈́͌ͫ͒I̶̐̆ͭ́ͣ̂̄N̵̄́̌̇ͣ͐̚G̛̘̖̓ͪ́̿ͯ̚!̰͉̹͚̮̬̎͛̽̑ ̛̔̊̐ͦ̄́ͣI̳͙͛̀̇ͤ̓ ͍̬̙͇͙ͅJ͈̭̬̦͖̀̏ͦŬ̂͗ͦͯͮͭ҉̖̻̺S͏͈̭̥T͙̰͕̱̦͖̓̈͗ͣ ͈ͪ̐̃ͧW̱͔̭̼͐̄̽ͫ̀̌͞A͉̯̖̻͘N̬̫̺̖T̗͚̣̜͔̥̍̂ͣ̆̓̂͂Ę͔̦͉̪́ͬD̤̤̰̬̣̳͋ ̦̼̖̲̥͔̩̒ͤ̽ͯ̚̚͞T̽̑ͩ́ͨO̦̰̒̏̽̆̏͆ͮ͡ ̛͚ͨ͆ͬ̎ͅH͇͓̥̚͝ͅE̻͚͑͛͡L̯̈́̽̽̎̈̾Ṗ̴͎͓͊̾!̳̖̗̩̠͒̾̄͂ͅ ̵̹̙̱͉̯͂̒̂ͅW̸̲͍͕͓̘̻̩͌̃͊̎H̡̠̠̩̑̊̍̈̇̍̋Y̰͎͙͔͕͊̔̿̋͞ ̧ͮ̒̂ͯ̒̉D̺͓̻͈̣̬͙̿̂̕Ō̺͔̜̠̗Ń͓̙ͧ̈̔'͏̫Ť̞͈͘ ̲͇̙̗̤ͨ̈̄Y̥̥͉̖̊̑͆ͣ̅Ȏ̲ͦU̹̣̲̳͉̠ͯ̆̓̀ͣ͐͢ ̫͗ͤ͒͛͊͂ͧL̴̯̩̲̂̄̉̊͊̈Öͣ͋̿ͭ҉̟͉̖̗͖̖V͛̂E̟̩͌̃͞ ̞̜̪̱ͥ͊ͩͣM̰̙̦̣͙̾̓E̹͓̼̩̣͖̭?̴̳͕͇͉̮͑̀ͤ͑!̩͕̪͈̘̇͗̈́ ̞̤̞̬̻͗́̄W̮̳̳͔̲̘Ḫ͈̹ͩ̃̑͑͂ͨ̚Y͈̠̦ͪ?̣̳ͪͮ̏͊!͖͛ͧ̒̔ ̰͍̯̚** **_W̹̟͉͖͓̫H̫̰̬̠̟̻ͣͣ̍ͯỶ̠ͭͦ͂̏ͩ̊?̹̋͢!͂ͪͯ̕_ **

 

 

Locus heard Fox suck in a breath, and noted how her hands were shaking. “We’re fine. We’re fine,” she muttered, but her voice was wobbly and scared. She typed in a final command and glanced up at him. “Pull the plug,” she said, her voice suddenly firm.

**I'͞m ̵sca̕re͝d͟. Pl҉ea͡se.̛ I'm scared,̨ ̨C͠om͠ma͢nde̵r ̸F͘ox̵.̕ I̶ ̸dǫn͞'t͡ w̶an̨t̨ to di̸e.͘ P͞l̢eas̛e͏, ҉p͏l̨ea̛se͘, pl̕ȩas̴e ̴do͞n'͏t ̶s̛h͟u͜t͏ me ̕off. ͡I'̢ll͟ be ̕g̸o͟od̶.̷ ̛I͏ pro͘m̕i̕s̵e̸ I̸'ll ̸be͢ g҉o̧o͘d҉. I'll n̸ever hu͠rt an̸yonȩ ͏a̧gain. P̸l̢e̢a͢se,̛ p͘le̷a͞s̡e,̨ ple̵a̧s̴e.̶ I͝'m̵ so ̕sc̨a̛r͞ed͡.͏ Pl͜e͡asę.**

 

Locus met Fox’s gaze, and she met his. “Do it,” and though her voice was only a whisper, somehow it was the loudest thing in the room.

Locus reached out and grabbed the base of where the cable connected to the power core, grinding his teeth as CORA let out one last terrified scream, and pulled.

Three things happened at once; first, the alarms and flashing lights went out and CORA’s optic went dark. Second, a massive tremor rocked the station as the primary power core ruptured, throwing both Fox and Locus off balance, and forcing them to cling to their surroundings to avoid toppling over. Three, the uppermost part of the tower, began to _lean._

“Shit! _Shit!_ ” Fox gasped, looking over at Locus. Struggling upright with the help of her grav-boots.

Locus did the same, his side smarting from being so suddenly jostled around. “Is there a way out of here?” he asked.

“Uh…” Fox looked around frantically. “Up!” And then turned, grabbed onto one of the thick cables behind her, and started climbing.

Locus’ confusion only lasted a second as the upper part of the tower made it’s trajectory more apparent. Below, loose rubble began to slide, and CORA’s remaining appendage groaned as it dangled on its axis. Not needing any more of an explanation, Locus found a foothold and started climbing after Fox.

When he finally caught up to her, she had almost reached the ceiling. “I’m assuming you have a plan?” he asked.

“I’m gonna use _ShowStopper_ to punch a hole through the ceiling,” Fox explained.

“How is a _radio channel_ going to-”

“Not the radio channel! My shield! That’s it’s name!” Fox said, reaching a point where she could no longer climb upwards. She leapt onto a nearby pipe and straddled it, and activated the shield, holding it above her head. “You’re going to want to brace a little bit!” she shouted over the groan of metal. Locus felt his head swim as his world began to pitch forwards. He watched as Fox took a deep breath, formed both of her hands into fists, and slammed them together.

There was a sound like a sonic boom, and Locus stared in a mixture of amazement and shock as sunlight poured in. But the feeling was short lived as the structure buckled, and began to fold in on itself. He heard Fox shout his name and saw her reach for him, then everything pitched sideways and went black.

 

* * *

 

The sound of screaming metal echoed through the canyon as the behemoth of Station Alpha collapsed inwards on itself, its implosion fueled by the ruptured power core that spat reds and oranges in bursts of shrapnel as the walls of the structure gave out.

Tucker watched in horror as the uppermost tower, where Fox had been, bent to one side and collapsed against one of the four, smaller, outer towers surrounding the station. A cloud of dust kicked up as the rest of the structure began to settle in on itself. There was a low rumble, like the station letting out a death rattle, then everything grew silent and still.

“Holy shit,” Grif breathed, coming to stand beside Tucker.

“There’s no way they survived that,” Simmons added from somewhere behind him.

Tucker didn’t look at either of them and instead kept his eyes locked on the wreckage, jaw working beneath his helmet. Behind him, he could hear Wash trying to get in touch with Fox over comms. By the sound of it, he wasn’t having much luck.

The truth was, if Tucker was being honest with himself, it wasn’t so much that he particularly _liked_ Fox so much as he hated her circumstances. She’d been put through the one thing he feared above all else; she’d been helpless to save her teammates. And now here she was, risking her life for a group of people she didn’t even _know_ , who were supposed to be her enemy. And she was probably dead. It was just another loss to add to the scoreboard.

“We could’ve gone back for her,” Tucker said quietly. “We _should’ve_.”

Beside him, Grif let out a long sigh, crossing his arms.

“We…” Tucker looked over at the sound of Carolina’s voice. “We should return to the outpost. Fox mentioned in passing that she has a few ships capable of flight in the hangar there. The force field is down, so we should head out of here and report back to Chorus as soon as possible.”

“Agreed,” Wash said, weariness edging into his voice.

Tucker watched as Wash and the others began to make their way towards the Warthogs, tossing in their gear before climbing in themselves. He took a glance back over his shoulder at the wreckage, then started towards the Warthogs. He was about to climb in when a crackle of radio static stopped him in his tracks. Apparently, he wasn’t the only one who heard it, because the others looked around at one another right after too.

“Was that-?” Donut asked.

Wash glanced at him, then said over comms, “this is Agent Washington broadcasting over an open channel. Can anyone hear me?”

Tucker found himself holding his breath as another wave of static filled his helmet. And then, “fuck--g h--me- brea--ng right wh-n I fu--ing need -t.”

“Fox?!” It was more than just Wash on the channel this time; as several of them switched to comms at once when the heard the reply.

“Hi. Uh- shi-. H-ld on.” There was a screech emitted over the channel that set Tucker’s teeth on edge and caused several of his teammates to let out a groan. But when it stopped, Fox’s voice rang out loud and clear. “Okay, I think I fixed it! Stripes?”

“We’re here,” Wash replied. “Where are you?”

“And how did you survive?!” Simmons exclaimed, earning him a look from the other marine.

“Uh….not sure. To both of those, just to clarify. I kinda just winged it when shit started getting hairy.”

“Are you hurt?” Carolina asked.

“Yeeeep. Got a nice big cut on my thigh. But I should be able to walk on it. I think. It really isn’t all that painful. Locus is in a little worse condition- um, _yes_ you _are_ , mister. Don’t give me that bullshit.” Tucker glanced around at the others, startled when Fox suddenly stopped talking to them.

Beside him, Grif snickered.

“Okay, sorry about that,” Fox said, clearly addressing them again. “Yeah. I thiiiiink- Oh. Oh wait. Is that grass? Is that fucking _grass?!_ How far did we fall?!”

Tucker heard something that sounded like it might have been Locus’ voice, but he wasn’t speaking on comms.

“Holy fuck. Hang on- Oh my Jesus Christ on a pogo stick we are right under the fucking top of that tower.” And then, “uh...Oh. Well. That wasn’t there before.”

“Fox, what’s the matter?” Wash asked.

“‘Kay so you know how there was like, a flat valley we had to cross to reach the station? Well there’s a fucking ravine there now, so…”

Wash and Carolina exchanged a look, then glanced around at the others.

“Well? What are we waitin’ for?” Sarge piped up. “The lady saved our lives! Least we could do is return the favor!”

Wash let out a long sigh. “Alright, everyone in a Warthog. Let’s go get them.”

When they arrived at the edge of the ravine, Fox greeted them with a cheerful wave. Locus, on the other hand, seemed worse for wear, with blood streaked down the front of his chestplate, but he appeared steady on his feet regardless. The rescue efforts were slow, and involved lots of cables and even more swearing, but when the two were finally across the ravine, everyone there couldn’t help but feel relieved.

“Alright, we saved them,” Grif spoke up after much of the clamour from the others had finally died down. “But it’s getting late, we all were almost murdered by fucking _zombies_ , and we just escaped a collapsing building. Can we _please_ go home now?”

“Sure thing,” Fox said, settling into one of the Warthogs, propping her feet up against the dashboard and folding her arms behind her head. “But one of you rainbow motherfuckers is driving.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CORA’s chamber was designed to look like the place where a boss battle happens for a reason. 
> 
> Also, fun fact about her. While it’s easy to see where she might have been influenced by Glad0s from the Portal series, it’s worth noting that’s not where my inspiration for her came from. I’m actually a huuuge fan of “2001: A Space Odyssey”. There’s a character in there named Hal who was like, the original good-to-evil AI (spoiler alert). It’s a really cool and really pretty film that was put together entirely with model ships and special effects because CGI really wasn’t a thing back then. If you’ve seen the movie, then you might have picked up the easter egg I dropped towards the end of the fight with CORA. If you didn’t, he line “I’m scared, Commander Fox” is a reference to the line HAL drops right before Dave shuts him off; “I’m scared, Dave.” It’s worth noting however, that unlike HAL, CORA doesn’t sing a song while she powers down. She’s not nearly that creative.
> 
> Non-Zalgo-ified versions of what CORA says in order of appearance for accessibility btw:
> 
> “IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT, YOU MONSTER! YOU KILLED THEM! YOU LET THEM DIE! THIS IS YOUR FAULT, YOU COWARD! I TRUSTED YOU! EVERYONE TRUSTED YOU! WE WERE A TEAM! WE BELIEVED IN ONE ANOTHER! YOU’RE A COWARD! A COWARD! I USED TO LOOK UP TO YOU, YOU MONSTER! DIE! DIE! DIE!”
> 
> “I LOVED YOU! I LOVED YOU, AND THIS IS WHAT YOU DO TO ME?! HOW COULD YOU?! DIDN’T YOU LOVE ME TOO?! I JUST WANTED TO BE A PART OF WHAT YOU WERE DOING! I JUST WANTED TO HELP! WHY DON’T YOU LOVE ME?! WHY?! WHY?!”
> 
> “I'm scared. Please. I'm scared, Commander Fox. I don't want to die. Please, please, please don't shut me off. I'll be good. I promise I'll be good. I'll never hurt anyone again. Please, please, please. I'm so scared. Please.”
> 
> Yeah, she’s real fun at parties.
> 
> Another fun title for his chapter is “Locus What The Fuck We’ve Gone Over This You Aren’t a Fucking Weapon Pull Your Shit Together.” Or for a simpler, more hands-on interpretation, you can just picture me hitting him with a rolled up newspaper.
> 
> Told you Simmons was ok.


	9. Movin’ On

“How are we supposed to get these hunks of scrap metal off the ground?” Grif asked with a whine, giving the large crate he was pushing into the back of Fox’s Condor another shove.

“Hey man, don't talk about the ladies like that,” Fox said, walking past with a slight limp. A bit of biofoam and a healing unit had her back on her feet in a matter of hours after they returned from Station Alpha. 

“Maybe if you'd kept them in better condition-”

“Well excuse me for prioritizing my life over a couple of ships,” Fox replied dryly, stacking the box of supplies in her arms into the back of one of the Pelicans.

“You really shouldn’t be moving around this much,” Simmons said, leaning over the edge of the wing of the Pelican Fox was by.

“I’ll rest once I’m off this rock,” Fox replied, walking away to go get another box. “Will it fit?” She called out to Caboose and Grif, who both had their backs pressed against the crate, feet scrabbling for purchase as they moved up the ramp.

“You took the fucking measurements!” Grif wailed.

“Gonna go with a  _ yes _ on that one,” Fox said as she passed.

“Why aren’t you using the forklift?” Carolina called over from where she was loading what few weapons and ammo boxes the outpost had left into a larger crate. 

“‘Cause it’s  _ broken!" _  Grif shouted back as he pushed. “Just like everything else in this stupid place!” As he spoke, he and Caboose gave the crate one last shove, and stepped back, admiring their work.

“We did it!” Caboose exclaimed.

“Well, it  _ fit _ ,” Grif sighed, looking in the direction of the three Warthogs they had driven earlier that day. “Now we gotta fit one of those in here as well.”

“We might be able to if we shift some things around,” Wash said, stepping out of the back of one of the Pelicans and taking the crate Carolina handed to him. 

“Worse comes to worse, we leave and come back for all three of them,” Fox said, returning with another box in her arms. She loaded it into Wash’s Pelican and turned to walk back but stopped when Sarge and Tucker entered. Sarge had a box of electronics under one arm and Tucker was fighting with re-looping some cables as he walked. 

“Is that the last of it?” Fox called out to them.

“Yep! Control room’s been stripped!” Sarged replied, right as Wash asked, “hey has anyone seen Locus?”

A brief silence fell over the hangar before Grif spoke up; “who cares? With any luck, that creep wandered off to die somewhere.”

“Why can’t we just leave him here?” Simmons agreed as he finished strapping down the crate in the Condor.

“We’re bringing him to Kimball,” Carolina said while handing off the last of the weapons crates to Wash. 

“He’s probably still in the greenhouse where I left him,” Fox replied, revving up one of the Warthogs and driving it with Wash’s guidance into the back of the Condor. 

“Greenhouse?” Wash asked when she hopped out of the driver’s seat.

“Yeah, how do you think I lasted this long? Charon stopped making deliveries here a long time ago, so I started a garden,” Fox said without looking back as she walked down the ramp towards the other two Warthogs. 

“I’m ready to hook the other Warthog up!” Donut said, leaning out of the other Pelican. 

“There’s no way we’re bringing all of those back,” Tucker observed, shoving the cables into the back of the Pelican Wash had been in.

“If they give that box in the back of the Condor a good shove, they could get two of ‘em in there,” Sarge suggested, doing the same with the box in his arm. 

“I am  _ not _ moving that thing again!” Grif yelled from across the hangar. 

“I will!” Caboose shouted.

“We’ll figure it out!” Fox exclaimed to no one in particular as she went to climb into the driver’s seat of the next Warthog. She was stopped, however, by Carolina.

“They can take care of the rest of this. You and I are going to find Locus,” she said.

Fox stared at her a moment, seeming to consider the request. “Alright,” she said finally. “But I’m leading. You go in there and stick a gun in his face; you’ll only spook him.”

“That’s hardly anyone’s problem,” Carolina said, following Fox away from the Warthogs and out of the hangar. 

“The enemy of your enemy is your friend,” Fox replied without looking back. 

Carolina stared at her, wondering if Tucker had informed her of the events at the Tower of Communication, or if Locus had told her himself. “Just because he decided he doesn’t want to work for Charon anymore, doesn’t mean that we can trust him,” she warned, following Fox around a corner.

“Funny, I said I don’t want to work for Charon anymore either, and you guys trusted me enough to help with what needed to be done,” Fox said, glancing over her shoulder this time as she spoke.

“That’s not the same, and you know it.”

Fox shrugged. “Either way, all I’m saying is that we’re both resources. And if you want cooperation, then some compromises might be in order.”

Carolina was about to reply when Fox chimed out a cheerful, “here!” stopping in front of a sliding glass door.

“Lemme handle this, okay?” Fox said.

“I’m coming in,” Carolina said firmly.

Fox let out a huffy sigh and replied, “give me  _ three _ minutes. That’s it. Afterwards you can come in and drag us both out for all I care.”

Carolina held her gaze evenly, then said, “three minutes” in a voice that suggested Fox get moving. 

Fox gave her a nod and stepped through the sliding glass doors. 

The greenhouse had always been a source of calm for her, especially when the mission began to take a turn for the worse. Fox had never been much of a gardener, having come from a city herself, but something about the action of tending to all her plants reminded her of home. And when she stepped into the greenhouse, drawing a deep breath into her lungs and letting it out slowly, she realized that feeling was still there. Yet it was distant, moving away from the little garden she had tended to for the past five years, like it wanted her to chase it. And a hard lump formed in her throat when she realized that, for the first time in a long time, she finally could.

It took her a moment to collect herself, but once she had, she looked over towards the workbench in the corner, where Locus was watching her patiently. “Sorry,” she said with a little laugh, looking away again, “I was just thinking about what leaving this place means.”

Locus said nothing, but she could feel him still watching her, so she cleared her throat and asked, “how are you feeling? Did the healing unit help?”

“I’m fine,” he replied after some hesitation, and Fox couldn’t help but wonder what had changed. But then she remembered Carolina.

“You’re coming back with us.” Fox cringed inwardly, wishing she hadn’t made her voice sound so firm. But instead of adding to the statement, she turned and walked down one of the rows of plants, stopping towards the end with an “aha!” She returned with a well-worn cigar box in her hands, its clasp long rusted into uselessness. She set the box on the workbench and pulled the ribbon that held it shut off, flipping the top open. 

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Locus shift slightly to get a look inside the box. She turned it towards him so he could see. “They’re seeds,” she explained. “Used to belong to Rosie...one of my teammates. She’s the one who really got this whole place started.” When Locus didn’t speak, she continued. “I’m gonna bring them with me. I don’t know. Feels right somehow. I think she’d want me to, anyways. She really did love this garden.” Fox turned and gazed back over the plant life with a soft sigh.

“It isn’t going to last.”

Fox looked over at Locus, who turned away when she did so. “So what? Death is a part of life.” She shrugged and looked back over the garden. “In a few months or so, the water pump will probably finally break, and these plants will no longer be misted like they’re used to. Most will die. Some will survive. Those that do will get a second chance through their offspring, who will be a bit more adapted to the new conditions. This will go on and on.” She fell silent for a while. “They have a good start,” she said finally, growing aware that Carolina would be on her way in any minute. “If the conditions are right, they’ll grow. Life always finds a way.”

She looked over as she heard the doors slide open, and Carolina stepped through. Much to Fox’s surprise, she didn’t have her weapon drawn, though she was still considerably tense.

“Are you finished?” Carolina asked, looking pointedly at Locus before she turned her attention to Fox.

“Yup!” Fox said, shutting the cigar box and tying it shut with the ribbon. Then she looked over her shoulder back at Locus and asked, “you got those gardening supplies, hon?”

Locus simply nodded and picked the small box of gardening tools up off the workbench. 

“Sweet,” Fox said. Then, “lead the way, ‘Lina!”

 

* * *

 

Fox had chattered endlessly on the way back to the hangar, and Carolina didn’t have the energy to try to shut her up. By the time they reached their destination, a headache pressed against the backs of her eyes, and she had to resist the urge to rip her helmet off and rub the bridge of her nose to relieve it. When they stepped into the hangar, she felt a glimmer of satisfaction when she noted that everything had been loaded into the ships during their absence. Well, almost everything. There was still one Warthog left....and the box Locus had, and judging by how everyone in the hangar tensed up when the three of them entered, it wasn’t going to be as easy as having him place it in one of the Pelicans and walk away.

Carolina met Wash’s gaze, and was about to call him over when she heard Fox say, “trade ya.” She didn’t have time to look back before Fox walked past with the box of gardening supplies on her shoulder.

“What-”

“I was a waitress in college!” Fox called back.

Wash watched her walk past, and looked back with equal amounts of confusion at Carolina.

_ Well that handles that problem, _ Carolina thought, looking back at Locus, who met her gaze evenly. She held firm for a moment, only looking away when she heard someone approach. It was Wash, and Fox was with him. 

“We need to discuss transport,” Wash said, coming to a stop and eyeing Locus. 

“Easy,” Fox yawned. “I can fly the Condor. Half of you ride in one Pelican, and the others go in the other one. Piece of cake.”

“You know what I’m talking about,” Wash said exasperatedly.

“Okay, so he rides with me. Jeeze. You guys don’t have to be all weird about it,” Fox said.

“Absolutely not!” Carolina hissed. 

“Oh my god, chill. We’re cool. Everything’s cool. He’s cool,” Fox said, glancing lazily over at Locus, who appeared to be winding tighter and tighter by the minute. “And it’s not like he can go with any of you guys. One wrong move from either party and someone winds up dead. It’s like that riddle with the farmer and the chickens and the dog and the wheat and they all have to get across the river but the boat can only fit two things in it aside from him. Leave the dog with the chickens and someone gets hurt. Leave the wheat with the chickens, and you’re fucked. At least that’s how I think it works, anyways…” Fox looked away, scratching the side of her helmet. 

“Were you  _ going _ somewhere with that analogy?” Carolina asked impatiently. 

“Point is, you leave him with me, no one gets hurt, ‘cause I’m the objective third party,” Fox replied.

“And then he kills you and takes the ship,” Wash said evenly.

“That will  _ not _ happen.” All three looked over when Locus spoke up suddenly.

“It’s that, or we drag you before Kimball. And you haven’t really done much to earn anyone’s trust here,” Wash replied, a hard edge to his voice.

“Oh my  _ god _ ,” Fox groaned. “Look. Here. Just take this.” Carolina watched as she pulled a spherical object off of her hip and handed it to Wash, who stumbled backwards slightly under a deceiving amount of weight when he took it from her. “That’s  _ my _ reason to keep my word and follow you idiots to Chorus.” And then she reached out with a much more familiar object in her hand and offered it to Carolina. “And that’s  _ his _ ,” Fox said, jerking her head in Locus’ direction.

Carolina noted how Locus seemed to tense up when he saw the handle of the Great Key in her hand, and she gripped it tightly, looking back at Fox. “This is supposed to be insurance?”

“It’s the best I can give you,” Fox replied. “But you can bet your ass I’m coming for that, Wash. So don’t either of you go getting any ideas that we’re going to bail on you.”

“Do you even know how to  _ fly? _ ” Wash asked.

“I mean, it’s just like riding a bike,” Fox said. “And anything I forget, I can just read the instruction manual to find out!”

Wash let out a world-weary sigh at her reply and looked away, shaking his head. Carolina, however, spoke up, looking at both Fox and Locus when she did so. “I want the communication channel kept  _ open  _ for the entire flight. Understand?”

“Sure thing, Lina-Bean,” Fox replied, and Carolina couldn’t help but feel a bit irked by the smugness in her tone. 

“ _ Don’t _ test me,” she added as she walked away with Wash in tow. When he finally caught up with her and fell in place besides her, she muttered, “this is stupid.”

Wash nodded, and said, “I agree, but considering how they worked together earlier, and the fact that we have insurance on both of them now, I think it’s safe to say that they won’t try anything dumb.”

“God, I hope you’re right, Wash.”

 

* * *

 

“So….”

Locus looked over with mild irritation when he heard Fox speak. “What?”

“Nothin’,” Fox said, not looking away from the Condor’s controls. “Just, y’know, wanted to chat, I guess. Fill the empty space.”

Locus felt his irritation grow at this, and he looked away. 

“You’re kind of an introvert, aren’t you?” Fox asked. 

Locus didn’t respond, and resisted the urge to look back at her. He wasn’t really sure why it mattered to Fox so much that they have a conversation. Especially when the others were listening. 

“Oreo was like that too. He was another one of my teammates.”

“What was the purpose of your codenames?” If she was going to force him into a meaningless conversation, he might as well get something out of it, Locus decided. 

“Code-? Oh,  _ no _ , no. They weren’t codenames!” Fox exclaimed with a little laugh. “Those were just nicknames. Everyone had one. I got mine ‘cause I’ve been dying my hair red for years now. I guess Ludsy just thought that ‘Fox’ fit better.”

“Why do you still go by it?”

“Hmm?” Fox looked over at him this time. And Locus realized that he didn’t like the way she seemed to scrutinize him.

“You abandoned your old name; Annie. Why?”

“Oh,” Fox said. “No I didn’t ditch that name. I mean, I still respond to it if someone calls me that. ‘Fox’ is just...kinda sentimental to me, y’know?” 

_ Oh, _ Locus thought, and couldn’t help but feel a twinge of disappointment. It quickly changed to tension however when Fox asked, “why do you go by Locus? Kinda weird to just let yourself be called the name of your armor, don’t you think?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Locus replied just a tad  _ too _ quickly, and judging by how Fox looked over at him when he did so, she caught on. 

“Touchy subject, huh?” Fox said, and he  _ hated _ the way she said it; like she was speaking to someone who had just told her they’d lost someone dear to them. It felt so  _ condescending. _

“It isn’t your concern,” Locus said back, an edge to his voice.

“Alright, just testing the water is all,” Fox said, looking away. 

And Locus looked over at her again, wondering if she had really just shown her hand. And trying to figure out why she was so casual about it.  _ She’s still a threat _ , he reminded himself.  _ So be more careful. _

 

* * *

 

Wash felt his heart skip a beat when he heard Fox bring up the topic of Locus’ name. He looked over at Carolina, noting how her grip on the control wheel had tightened. She must have heard it too. Wash looked out the cockpit window, watching the Pelican being piloted by Grif besides them in the corner of his eye with a sinking feeling in his gut. He and the other Reds and Blues had taken one Pelican, while Wash and Carolina had opted to take the other. While Carolina had explained the reason behind the decision was simply because the other Pelican had more room, Wash knew that she also wanted more maneuverability in case the Condor turned hostile. And judging by the conversation topic Fox had just picked, it was something that might be happening far sooner than either of them had expected.

Wash listened with bated breath as Locus snapped at her, and watched Carolina’s grip on the control wheel get even tighter.

“This was a bad idea,” she said suddenly, and Wash met her gaze as she looked over at him. “I don’t know why I let her talk us into this.”

“We have insurance on both of them-”

“That’s not enough.”

Wash sighed and leaned back in his seat. He couldn’t help but feel a little relieved when the conversation between Locus and Fox ended. At least if they weren’t talking, the odds of Fox saying something that might give Locus a reason to hurt her were slim. 

Wash basked in the silence for a while, listening to the hum of the ship, watching as Chorus drew closer. He couldn’t help but feel a little relieved that they were returning to the planet, even after everything that happened there. 

“I’m going to try to get a hold of Kimball.” He looked over when Carolina spoke. Her eyes never left the controls. 

“I’ll let the others know and keep an ear to the channel,” Wash replied.

Now Carolina looked at him, acknowledging him with a nod, then she turned, picked up the mic, and began the process of hailing Chorus. “New Republic Headquarters, Sierra five-seven-zero, this is Agent Carolina requesting permission for atmospheric entry and landing for self and company, over.”

“Agent Carolina!” came the startled reply. Wash shook his head in amusement, hearing this just as he finished updating the others. “Er, I mean- State the identification of your company, over.”

“Eight friendlies; Agent Washington, Dexter Grif, Dick Simmons, Lavernius Tucker, Sarge, Franklin Donut, Michael Caboose, and myself. Another assumed friendly; full name unknown. First name ‘Annie’, but responds to ‘Fox’. One hostile; Locus, over.”

Both Wash and Carolina found themselves staring expectantly at the ship’s radio as an uncharacteristic period of silence stretched out for long minute. Then; “request pending. Please standby, over.” 

Wash looked over at Carolina, whose gaze was still fixed on the radio. “Do you think they’re getting Kimball?”

“I hope so,” Carolina replied, lowering the mic from her helmet and finally looking at him.

“I’ll let the others know,” Wash said, and switched to comms to relay the current news to the others. 

“These ships don’t have enough fuel for us to just hover in space like this!” came the frustrated reply from Grif.

“Look, just- Just hang tight for a minute, okay? I’m sure this won’t take long to get sorted out,” Wash replied. 

Grif grumbled out a reply that Wash didn’t quite catch, as a new voice came in over the radio right as he spoke.

“Agent Carolina, this is General Kimball. I’ve been informed that you have Locus with you. What’s his status?”

Carolina sucked in a breath and let it out slowly before raising the mic to her helmet and speaking again. “He’s currently travelling with our assumed friendly, Fox.”

The line was silent for a moment before Kimball said, “permission for atmospheric entry and landing granted. Have Fox contact me immediately, over.”

Wash gave Carolina a reassuring nod when she looked over at him, and she replied into the mic, “copy.”

 

* * *

 

“Fox, I’m sending you the information for a channel to contact General Kimball. Once you receive it, broadcast to that channel. She wants to speak to you before we land.” Fox listened as Carolina broadcasted to her over comms, tilting her head slightly at the mention of General Kimball. 

“Sure thing,” she replied slowly, the gears in her head working. She entered in the channel information as Carolina gave it to her, then looked over at Locus, who was watching her with the same unease as a deer standing on the side of the road watching the approach of distant headlights. With the channel open, he had to have heard everything. And while Fox had no real understanding of his exact relationship with the general, from what she could discern, it wasn’t good. 

“Just sit tight,” she said after a moment, turning her attention to the ship’s radio and picking up the mic. “Commander Fox to General Kimball, over.”

There was silence for a moment, then came the reply; “this is General Kimball. I’ve been informed that you have a hostile in your custody. What’s his current status?”

“Combination of major and minor injuries resulting from a crash-landing on Nalome and from falling a good few hundred feet during the collapse of a building,” Fox replied, noticing how Locus grew more tense out of the corner of her eye.

“Is he armed?”

“Negative. All weapons are being transported in the Pelican Grif is piloting.”

“And you?”

“Negative.”

Fox looked over when she saw movement, and noted that Locus had pressed an arm against his injured side. “That still hurt?” she whispered to him, pulling the mic away for a moment. 

“It’s fine,” came the growled reply. Clearly having to listen to two people talk about him in his presence wasn’t doing anything for his mood. 

“Commander Fox, here are your instructions for landing once you enter Chorus’ atmosphere,” came Kimball’s voice again. Fox looked back towards the radio and listened closely. “Once you enter the atmosphere, you are to follow the two Pelicans to the New Republic Headquarters. You will land on the landing pad. And both you and Locus will come out with your hands on the back of your heads. Failure to comply with this request in any way, at any point, will result in immediate termination. Do I make myself clear?”

“As crystal,” Fox replied, watching as the Pelicans ahead of them raised their shields. Hitting a series of buttons on the control panel, Fox did the same for the Condor. “We’re beginning preparations for atmospheric entry now.” She docked the mic and took a hold of the control wheel, adjusting several things on the control panel, aware of Locus watching her from the corner.

“She’s probably going to interrogate you,” Fox said after a moment, not looking away from the two Pelicans in front of her. “You need to tell her everything; no matter how hard or unimportant you might think it is. Honesty is probably the only way you’re getting out of this in one piece.”

“Why do you care?”

Fox looked over when Locus spoke, realizing with surprise that much of the fight seemed to have been drained from him. Now he just looked tired. “Let me be clear,” she said after some thought, “I don’t condone any of the shit you did to get in this mess. Whatever you have coming to you is probably well-deserved. However, like I said when we first talked, I believe people can change. And honestly, I’m curious to see the direction you go in from here.”

“So I’m nothing but a source of entertainment for you then?”

Fox tilted her head, sensing a hint of resentment in Locus’ voice. “No,” she said flatly. “Truth is, I don’t think I’m going to find any of what we’re both about to go through to be ‘entertaining’.” She turned when a sensor on the control panel beeped, and looked up when she noticed that the Pelicans had begun to enter the atmosphere, an orange glow begging to cloak the two ships. She dropped forward thrust and gripped the control wheel as the Condor rocked under the stress of entry friction. “All I need you to do is cooperate with whatever the general wants, and trust me to handle the rest, just like you did when we were fighting CORA.”

“It’s not that simple.”

Fox looked over at him with a laugh. “Well sure it is!” she exclaimed, then added, “I know I’m asking you to leap without looking a little here, but if it really bothers you so much, just close your eyes before you jump.” With that, she raised the Condor’s upward thrust to ten percent and watched as they slipped into the clouds.

 

* * *

 

Out of the ten million possible issues General Kimball expected to deal with today,  _ Locus _ hadn’t been on her list. Of course she knew the mercenary was still a possible threat, but in the week that followed the fight on  _ The Staff of Charon _ , no one had heard anything about him. He’d simply disappeared like a bad dream, and despite how foolish Kimball knew it was, she had hoped that he would stay gone forever. 

And yet…

She stepped out onto the tarmac with a flock of soldiers tailing her. As she looked up to watch the incoming Condor, her men got into formation on either side of her, forming a half circle around where it would land. 

Out of the corner of her eye, she spotting Carolina walking briskly towards her. To her back were the two Pelicans she and the Reds and Blues had piloted back, and the Marines in mention were unloading themselves from the ships behind her.

“General Kimball,” Carolina greeted, approaching her and falling into step beside her.

“It’s good to have you back in one piece,” Kimball said, but didn’t look at her, keeping her eyes locked on the Condor as it touched down instead. “How are the others?”

“Mostly minor injuries, though Caboose’s shoulder was dislocated and Simmons might have a concussion that needs attention.”

Kimball nodded. “Grey will have a look at them later.” She stepped through the gap in the middle of the half circle her men had made, watching as the Condor powered down, its form heavily silhouetted by the glare of the sun behind it. Carolina joined her, and by the time the Condor’s engines had finally stopped, Wash appeared on her other side, and she could hear the banter of the Reds and Blues somewhere behind her. 

Kimball watched as the Condor’s ramp lowered, not so much as blinking when her men all raised their weapons, nor looking over when Carolina and Wash did the same. She watched as the ship’s two passengers made their way down the ramp and stopped several yards away from her. 

For a moment, the only sound on the tarmac was the light shifting of loose asphalt gravel by the wind. Kimball held Locus in an iron gaze, and he stared back. But he somehow looked less like a deer in the headlights than a vulture waiting for an injured animal to collapse, and it made something in Kimball’s gut churn.

A small cough drew her attention away from him suddenly, and she found herself looking at the woman beside him clad in black and blue armor; Fox. 

“Hi!” Fox said when she realized she had Kimball’s attention, pulling her hand away from the back of her head a little to offer a small wave. “You must be Kimball, huh? Nice friends you have here.” She jerked her head in the direction of some of the men. “Though would you mind telling them to relax a little? I  _ promise _ we’re not gonna try anything.”

“Why were you piloting a ship alone with him?” Kimball asked, ignoring Fox’s request.

Fox leaned back slightly. “‘Cause I’m the objective third party, and I didn’t want anyone to tear anyone else’s head off,” she replied.

“What’s your relationship with him?” 

Fox tilted her head to one side. “I pulled him out of the wreckage of his ship after he nose-dived onto my moon. That’s about it, though. I’ve only known him for like, maybe a day or so?”

“And who are you? Why were you on a moon where known Charon weaponry is installed?”

“Well… You know my name’s Fox. Commander Fox, actually, but that’s not terribly important. And I worked for Charon. But I don’t anymore, because the chairman is an asshole,” Fox replied, lowering her hands a little bit and shifting her weight to one side.

Kimball got the sense that she wasn’t taking their conversation very seriously. “You’re responsible for the weapons system coming online.” It wasn’t a question, though it wasn’t exactly an accusation either. Still, Kimball noticed Wash look at her out of the corner of her eye and noted how he lowered his weapon slightly. Clearly there was something else going on here that no one had cared to explain. 

“That’s not on me,” Fox said, and there was a new hint of tension to her voice. Kimball couldn’t help but feel a little satisfied knowing that now she had the other woman’s attention. “The weapons system was put online remotely. Probably from  _ The Staff of Charon _ , if I had to second a guess. After struggling with the AI that was meant to run it, we - as in the peanut gallery behind you, the dynamic duo on either side of you, and both me and you’re friend here - were able to get both her and  _ it _ offline.” Fox shrugged, “that’s the short version anyways,” she added. 

Kimball listened to her explanation, thinking hard. Then turned to Carolina and asked, “is this the truth?”

“It is,” Carolina said with a nod. 

Satisfied, Kimball looked back at Fox. “At ease,” she said after a moment, and watched as Fox let her arms drop to her sides with a relieved sigh. Then she turned and fixed Locus in a hard gaze, “ _ you _ , on the other hand-”

“Proooobably needs some serious medical attention since he’s literally being held together by biofoam, a healing unit, and maybe a little bit of duct tape,” Fox cut her off, leaning into her field of view. She paused, then looked up at Locus and said, “don’t worry, it’s actually just medical tape. ‘Cause I couldn’t find aaaany of my suturing needles. Sorry.”

“Ah- _ hem! _ ” Both Fox and Locus looked back in Kimball’s direction, appearing startled. “Fox,  I didn’t ask for your input. And you have no authority here, regardless of your previous position under Charon Industries.” She waited until Fox retreated back towards where she had previously been standing before continuing, returning her gaze to Locus. “As I was saying, you will be transported to a cell. After Fox is debriefed, you will be interrogated. Any resistance on your part will  _ not _ be tolerated. And if you try to escape, you  _ will _ be shot, understand?”

Locus held her gaze for an uncomfortable amount of time, and Kimball felt the hackles on the back of her neck raise. But before she could demand an answer from him, he gave her a slow nod.

“Good,” Kimball said coldly. Then, to her men, said, “get him out of my sight,” before turning her back to Locus. 

Before her, the Reds and Blues parted, forming a clear path between her and the exit to the tarmac. “Fox, walk with me,” she snapped, not turning back to look at the other woman. But in the reflection of Sarge’s visor, she saw Fox exchange a look with Locus before starting after her, and it made something in her gut twist. “Carolina, Washington, I want you to assist with transporting Locus. If he tries anything, shoot him,” she added to the two on either side of her.

“Copy,” Wash replied, and then both he and Carolina fell out of step with her, to be replaced shortly after by Fox. 

Kimball didn’t look at her, and instead focused on retaining some grace and resisting the urge to go back and tear Locus’ head clean off as she stepped back into the New Republic headquarters. It was after some time of them walking through the halls that she finally decided to address Fox.

“What was your position working for Charon Industries?”

“Commander of an operation involving the study of alien technology on Chorus to be converted into weaponized biotics,” came the reply. 

Kimball couldn’t help but feel a bit surprised at how calm Fox sounded. It didn’t seem natural that the other woman wouldn’t be a little tense after having dozens of guns trained on her. 

“Where are the men under your command?”

“Dead. Killed by the AI Charon sent to monitor our progress and help us run operations. She went rogue and trapped us on the moon with a force field generated by a network of orbiting satellites. My men wanted to escape and tried to shut her down. It didn’t end well.”

Kimball listened, her suspicion only rising further. “Can you prove this?”

“Absolutely. And the Reds, Blues, and Freelancer duo can back me on it.”

Kimball let out a long breath. “Good,” she said with a nod, falling silent again. 

But the silence between her and Fox didn’t last long, as the latter finally spoke up again after only a minute. “Are you planning on providing Locus with  _ any _ medical attention?”

Caught off guard, Kimball turned her head towards her. “That’s no concern of yours,” she said after fumbling through her mind for an answer.

“As a doctor, I beg to differ,” Fox replied, returning her gaze.

“You said you were a commander.”

“A commander of a group of  _ other doctors and researchers _ looking to enhance biotic limbs with alien technology,” Fox explained, then added, “I have a P.H.D. in biomechanical engineering. Earned it through the U.N.S.C. And on top of that I was a corpsman in New Mombasa during the war.”

“I see,” Kimball said, looking away, trying to shake her surprise. She thought quietly for a moment, wondering why it would even matter to Fox if Locus was given proper medical attention. It’s not like he wouldn’t receive any; Kimball ran a tight ship, but she certainly wasn’t cruel. “He’ll be taken care of.”

“That’s all I needed to hear,” Fox said with a nod.

Under her helmet, Kimball bit her lip. Despite paying close attention to the other woman throughout their entire conversation, she still couldn’t quite put a finger on what it was about Fox that made her feel so uneasy; aside from the fact that she had been involved with Charon, of course. She thought about it as she led Fox through headquarters, in the direction of her office. 

“You’re not afraid of him,” she pointed out suddenly, curiosity getting the best of her at last. “Why?”

“Because I’ve seen  _ real _ monsters,” Fox replied without missing a beat. 

“He  _ is _ a monster,” Kimball insisted.

“No,  _ Hargrove _ is a monster.  _ The AI on Nalome _ was a monster. If anything, Locus is just...misguided,” Fox explained.

Kimball stared at her incredulously. “ _ Misguided? _ ” she hissed disgustedly.

“Don’t get me wrong; that doesn’t remove him from responsibility for all of this. You can be misguided and still be a jackass. But you should also remember that it was his state of  _ being _ misguided that led him to taking the job that  _ Hargrove _ offered,” Fox elaborated without looking at her. “Hargrove is the real monster here. Locus was just his lackey. And since he's obviously no longer involved with the chairman, we can use him and what he knows against Charon.”

Kimball stared at her a moment, all anger and suspicion dissolving in an instant. If Fox really saw Locus as means to an end, then everything she had said beforehand added up. And if that were true, then of  _ course _ she’d be concerned about his wellbeing; she wanted to use him against Hargrove to get even. Kimball looked away and stopped in front of the entrance to her office, pulling herself back into reality. She stepped through the sliding doors, walking around to the other side of the holo-projection table in the center of the room and facing Fox.

Fox entered and took a moment to survey her surroundings before looking back at Kimball. “Nice place,” she commented.

Kimball waved it off and asked, “why did you come here?”

Fox shrugged. “I had nowhere else to go.”

“You came here in the only ship out of the three with a slipspace drive. You could have run.  _ Both _ of you could have run.”

“But we didn’t,” Fox said, meeting her gaze. “And if we’re being square here, you guys might be my only chance of kicking Hargrove’s ass.”

Behind her visor, Kimball narrowed her eyes. “You came to us for help?”

“I mean, yeah? Kinda?”

Kimball leaned back, but didn’t take her eyes off of Fox. This was interesting. She was about to speak when she heard Wash say over comms, “Locus is secure. Do you want us to wait here until you come down?”

Kimball sighed, holding up a finger to Fox and turning away from her slightly. “Yes, Wash, that’s fine. I’m on my way.” She looked back at Fox, who hadn’t moved. “I’m going down to have a word with Locus. I’ll send an escort up to get you shortly and take you to your new quarters. When I get back, we’ll talk, but until then, you have free range of the headquarters so long as you don’t try to leave, understand?”

Fox gave her a snappy salute, “aye, ma’am!” she chimed.

Kimball gave her a nod and walked past, unable to reflect any of the other woman’s cheerfulness. As she exited her office and made her way down the hall, something dark and bitter swelled inside of her at the thought of what she was on her way to do. 

She had an insect problem to take care of. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Get it? Cuz Locus is like one letter away from “locust”, which is a bug? I’m hilarious.
> 
> “It isn’t going to last” Locus shut the fuck up omg stop being such an edgy douchecanoe.
> 
> As someone who has also been a waitress, I promise you, once you learn how to lift a ~50 lbs tray of food, plates, and bread baskets onto your shoulder, you can carry just about anything. No but really those trays aren’t light even though we make them look like they are. And when you add all that other shit, it gets HEAVY.
> 
> KIMBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALL. Finally I get to write about my wife thank GOD. I love her so much oh my g od.
> 
> Why is it that when I read the word “yawn,” I yawn?  
> You did it too, didn’t you? >:)
> 
> Anyways on a more serious note, the first part of this chapter was about as stagnant as this fic is going to get. I’m a harsh critic of my own work, so maybe I’m just being a bit too hard on myself when I say that the first part is a little weak for my tastes. But that’s how writing works, ya know? You come up with a bunch of good ideas and then you gotta put shit in between those ideas to make a comprehensive story. *rolls around on the floor*
> 
> Writing is hard. Don’t do it. Don’t be like me, kids. 
> 
> Also, on a sadder note, I will be putting my dog down soon, so there's a good chance that I might not update for a little bit. Between that, and school starting up again, I'm going to be a whole lot busier. I'm going to try to get at least one more chapter out before I leave for college again, but no promises. Thanks for your patience! <3


	10. Small Talk

The interrogation room was cold and bright; the overhead light reflecting off the surface of the metal table Locus was seated at. The cuffs around his wrists were chained to the table, limiting his movement and making it difficult to get comfortable. To his right, there was large panel of one-way glass. His skin prickled at the idea of being watched.

How long had he been here? He knew it had to be only a few minutes, but already it felt like hours had passed. And the throbbing in his side only made every second seem that much longer. It all would have been much more bearable if not for the knowledge that General Kimball could walk in at any moment. 

From the moment he had been led into the room, he had been running through every possible outcome of the interrogation in his head. His odds were terrible. He wanted to be bitter about it, but a combination of untreated wounds and a lack of sleep left little room for anything other than exhaustion.

Locus stared at the table, fidgeting idly with the chain. He looked up suddenly when he heard the sound of a mechanical lock sliding back, and watched as the steel door beside the window slid back. For a split second, nothing happened, and Locus forced himself to let out the breath he realized he had been holding. Then there was movement, and he suddenly found himself looking at his own reflection in a blue visor.

General Kimball.

She regarded him in silence for a moment, standing completely still. Locus did the same, watching her carefully, waiting for her to do something. When she finally spoke, it was like lightning striking a tree without a cloud in sight. “You have a lot to answer for.”

Locus said nothing. What could he say? That he was  _ sorry? _ It wasn’t like she would believe him. And it certainly wouldn’t change what happened. 

“Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Locus realized he didn’t. There  _ was _ no excuse. He watched as Kimball stepped closer, tension building in her shoulders.

“Well?”

He forced himself not to flinch when she slammed a hand down on the table and snapped; “ _ say _ something!”

Locus sucked in a breath and let it out slowly, trying to detangle the thoughts in his head. Trying to think of something,  _ anything _ . He stared at her, and an awful pain, like someone had jammed a knife under his sternum and twisted, clenched in his chest. There was nothing he could give her, or any of her men, that would make things right. “What do you want me to say?” he rasped. 

He watched as Kimball jerked back a little bit when he spoke. It was slight, and he would have missed it had he blinked. He wondered if she had been expecting something else. 

The hand Kimball had slammed onto the table balled into a fist, and Locus watched it with resignation, waiting to be hit. The blow never came, but it may as well have, for what she said next stung just as much. “You’re a murderer and a coward,” she snarled. “ _ Thousands _ are dead because of you and Felix. And the best you can give me is ‘what do you want me to say’?! Are you  _ serious? _ ”

Locus noted how her voice shook with barely contained fury. And he watched as she leaned forward, looming over him threateningly.  _ Just say something. Talk about Hargrove. Give her something to chew on. _ “I can help,” he said, forcing an even tone. 

Even if he couldn’t see Kimball’s face, he could  _ feel _ the glare she gave him when he said that. “ _ Help? _ ” she repeated incredulously. “There’s nothing you can do to fix what you’ve done.”

“I-” Locus cut off, rethinking what he wanted to say, then started again. “Anything you wish to know about Charon Industries or the chairman that I have knowledge of, I can provide you.”

Kimball tilted her head slightly, and leaned back just a little bit. “You’re offering information?” Her voice was still tense, but much of the anger had left it. It was a start, at least. 

“I am,” he replied with a nod. 

“Fox is closer to Charon than you are. Anything you could tell us, she likely already knows.” 

“Fox was marooned on a moon for six years, four of which were in total isolation. Her knowledge of Charon is dated,” Locus said, silently hoping that he was right. 

“We’ll see,” Kimball said, and there was an edge of a threat to her voice. She then straightened up and let her hand drop to her side, gazing down at him. Her silence filled the space for a moment, but was broken when she pulled out the chair across from him and sat down. 

Locus watched her carefully, feeling slight relief that she had finally decided to sit. She was less of a threat this way. Still, he couldn’t quite unwind the tension from his muscles. Not yet. They weren’t done yet.

“I want you to start by telling me why you started all of this.”

If he hadn’t been wearing his helmet, Kimball would have seen the way he blinked in surprise at the request. Why did it matter? Locus felt a stab of frustration at this. He couldn’t change the past, so why would she care what happened in it? “It was just a job,” he said, aware of how utterly pathetic the response sounded. 

“Just a job,” Kimball echoed, disgust edging her voice. “Mass murder is just a job to you, then?”

_ Say something. Just tell her whatever will get you out of this. _ “It...wasn’t supposed to turn out like this.”

“ _ Really? _ And what  _ was _ it supposed to turn out like?” Kimball’s voice slowly slipped into a growl.

“The first order was simply to kill the leaders of the two separate factions. The chairman told us little further than that. It wasn’t until after we accomplished our mission that the intentions of the chairman became clear. The way he had worded our orders when he had first recruited us made our task seem like a simple hit to start a civil war. He never gave any indication that he planned on furthering our involvement,” Locus explained.

Kimball regarded him coldly, but seemed to absorb what he had said. She took a moment to process it all, folding her hands together and placing them on the table. “You could have walked away,” she said finally. 

_ You’re wrong, _ he wanted to say. It had never been that simple; not with how Felix-- Locus looked away, angry at himself. Why did it all have to be so difficult?

“Why didn’t you? Why stay? Was it fun for you?”

“ _ No. _ ” The word escaped him before he even had time to process it, and he found himself looking back at Kimball with a burning glare. Of  _ course _ it wasn’t fun. It had been nothing more than a job. At the time, he’d been indifferent to it.

“Then what?” Kimball demanded, her voice laced with impatience.

“It-” How was he supposed to explain it? What could he possibly say? That he needed structure? That having orders made him feel like he had a purpose? “I don't know,” he said instead. 

And Kimball stared at him in disbelief. “You don't know,” she echoed flatly. “People are dead, and you don't even have a good reason for it.”

Locus hated the fact that she was right. 

Kimball watched him a moment longer, as though waiting for him to say something else. But when he didn’t, she spoke instead. “You’re going to tell us everything that you know,” she said. “Every detail about Hargrove and Charon you have. And when you’re done, we’re going to cross-reference that information with Fox, and then figure out what to do with you. Understand?”

Locus held her gaze for a moment, then let out a long, defeated sigh. “I understand,” he said, “but you already know much of what I have to tell you.”

“And what did you leave out?” 

“Felix reported the presence of the alien AI to the chairman. What he intends to do with that information, I’m not certain,” Locus replied.

Kimball was silent, and Locus had the sense that she had been expecting more than what he’d given her. She inhaled like she was about to speak, but then stopped suddenly, and looked sharply towards the window. She was still for a moment, then looked back at him and said, “we’re not finished,” then stood and stepped outside, once again leaving Locus in isolation.

 

* * *

 

“Felix reported the presence of the alien AI to the chairman. What he intends to do with that information, I’m not certain.”

Of course he had. Of course that little weasel had told Hargrove about Santa. No wonder the chairman hadn’t given up on his assault. Kimball had been just about to reply to Locus, when a voice over comms exclaimed, “did he just say an  _ alien _ AI?!”

Kimball snapped her head towards the window, as though she would somehow be able to see past its reflective surface and get a look at who had just spoken. She could name every person standing behind that glass, and that voice belonged to  _ none _ of them. 

She looked back at Locus, regarding him for a moment before saying, “we’re not finished,” before standing and heading for the exit. When the steel door slid open again, a wave of irritation and confusion washed over her.

“ _ What? _ ” she asked incredulously, stepping through and letting the door slide shut behind her. 

“I’m sorry ma’am,” the soldier who had been summoned as an escort wheezed, bent over, with his hands on his thighs. “She’s really fast, and slippery, and persuasive. I tried--.... _ Ooooh _ I think I need to sit down.”

Kimball stared at the soldier in disbelief, then looked over at the table next to him. Seated on top of it with a manila folder open in her lap, was Fox.

“Hiya!” she greeted with a cheerful wave. 

Kimball didn’t say anything, and simply looked over at Carolina and Wash. Carolina shook her head, and Wash just shrugged.

“She wasn’t here a minute ago,” Wash said to her, sounding just as confused as she felt. 

“How…” Kimball shook her head and returned her gaze to Fox. “How did you get down here?”

“You said I had free range of the facilities. So I explored a bit,” Fox replied.

“But why- I don’t-” Kimball couldn’t decided what was more frustrating; Fox’s outright cheekiness, or the fact that it was causing her to struggle with forming a coherent thought. “We’re in the  _ middle _ of something.”

“Yeah, I know,” Fox said, tapping a pen she pulled out of the folder against the side of her helmet. “I wanted to spectate. I was bored.”

“ _ Bored? _ ” Kimball spluttered.

“Like, don’t get me wrong, and don’t take this the wrong way; but literally all facilities planted on some foreign planet in outer space look the  _ exact same _ . Though, if it makes you feel any better, the one you guys are in is  _ way _ nicer than the one I was stuck in for six years,” Fox elaborated.

“We’re interrogating a  _ prisoner. _ This isn’t something that’s meant for public entertainment!” Kimball snapped, finally finding her tongue. 

“Oh, I know  _ that! _ ” Fox said, waving the pen around dismissively. “I just wanted to see if I could help!”

“I already told you that we’d talk  _ afterwards,” _ Kimball replied, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice and failing. 

“No, no,  _ no! _ ” Fox chuckled, snapping the folder shut. “Let me elaborate a little. I,” she began, pointing towards herself, “wanted to see if I could help you with  _ him. _ ” She finished by waving the pen in the direction of the window. And Kimball found herself following it until her eyes fell on Locus. She felt her irritation bubble into anger. 

“We have everything under control,” Kimball said, forcing an even tone. 

“I can see that,” Fox replied. And Kimball genuinely could not tell if she was being sarcastic or not. 

“What would you even do?” Kimball asked, deciding to indulge the other woman a little, just to see where it took her. 

“I dunno, sit and chat with him. Maybe have a little think tank? Throw some ideas back and forth? He mentioned an AI, which is kinda strange to me, since Hargrove already  _ had _ an AI. I’m thinking that if I can get in there and maybe present some different ideas, we can work together and find one that sticks and maybe get a nice good theory going.”

“A theory?” Kimball asked, taking care to be cautious of her tone. If she sounded too interested, there was a chance that Fox would leap at the opportunity. And given how unpredictable she had already proven to be, Kimball didn’t want to give her any more potential fuel. 

“Yeah, you know, just to sort of speculate on the direction that Hargrove is headed in. If we can merge our ideas together, we might be able to come up with something tangible,” Fox explained, illustrating the word ‘merge’ by holding her hands up in front of her face and lacing her fingers together. 

Kimball processed this for a moment. Both Fox and Locus had information about Charon. Neither, so far, had told her everything she wanted to know. There was a chance that if the two were put together, they could produce  _ something _ useful, however there was also the concern of how they would interact with one another. Locus hadn’t seemed hostile towards Fox, but that could very well change depending on what she said or did while she was in the room with him. And Fox...was entirely unafraid of him, which gave her an advantage, however subtle it might be. 

Kimball looked over at Locus through the glass, her mind working. She hadn’t gotten much out of him. He was too wary of her. Fox, at least, seemed to have gained  _ some _ of his trust.  _ How _ she managed to do that, Kimball wasn’t sure, but she knew it could be useful if utilized properly.

“Very well,” she said, finally setting her decision in stone. As she looked back at Fox, she noticed how Carolina, Wash, and the other soldiers in the room were looking at her. They were anxious. Kimball felt it too, but she choked it down. They didn’t have time for worry right now. “You’re going to go in there, and you’re going to discuss that AI,” she instructed.

Fox nodded and set the folder and pen beside her on the table before hopping off of it. “Anything else you’d like me to say?” she asked as she made her way towards the door.

“Get him to trust you,” Kimball added with a nod.

Fox stared at her for a moment, then shrugged and said, “I’ll do my best.” Then she hit the release button on the panel next to the door, and stepped through.

 

* * *

 

Locus had been expecting Kimball, or Washington, or Carolina. So when it was Fox who walked through the door instead, he couldn’t help but feel surprised. He watched as she walked over and sat in the chair across from him, placing her elbow on the table and propping her chin up with her hand. 

“‘Sup, Sunshine. How you feeling?” she asked.

Locus stared at her, the realization that she had likely been sent in  _ by _ Kimball creeping over him. “Why did she send you?” he asked, ignoring her question.

Fox shrugged. “I asked for a couple of minutes to talk to you, is all.”

_ And she just  _ **_gave_ ** _ them to you? _ Locus seriously doubted Kimball would be so lenient. “And what are you here to discuss?”

“That AI you mentioned. I wanna know about it,” Fox explained. 

“You were listening.” It wasn’t so much a question as it was a vocalized realization. 

“Guilty as charged,” Fox said, raising her free hand in a gesture of surrender for a moment before dropping it back into her lap. “I sort of just wanted to bounce some ideas off of you and see if we could come up with a reason why Hargrove might want it.”

“It’s alien technology,” Locus said flatly, growing a little impatient.

“I  _ know _ , pal. He wanted the alien tech on this planet so he could build weapons and shit,” Fox said, waving her freehand in the air by her head. “Big whoop.” She then folded both her arms on the table and leaned forward. “But an  _ AI. _ You can’t really duplicate those things. They’re fragile. If you mistreat them, they can get corrupted and distorted and won’t run properly. Not only that, but if the AI is as ancient as all the other alien tech on this planet allegedly is, then there’s a high chance that it may have reached metastability. Which would boost it’s market value  _ immensely _ . And depending on it’s protocols, it could probably delete itself as a hail Mary in the worst-case scenario.”

“You think the alien AI would delete itself?” 

“Gosh, that’s the thing;  _ I don’t know _ ,” Fox replied. “I mean, if it runs all the technology on this planet, then there’s a good chance that just deleting itself wouldn’t be a part of its protocol. Probably. I’m skipping stones here,” she admitted.

It occurred to Locus that he didn’t know the extent of the AI’s control either. It seemed to be present at every tower they had been to, but his interaction with it had thus far been limited. “If self-destruction is against the AI’s protocol, then what would happen if the chairman were to get a hold of it?”

Fox tapped a finger against the chin of her helmet. “I don’t know. Assuming the AI has access to all of the alien technology, it could give him control over it. I don’t know much about alien technology, truthfully, so I’m spitballing here, but there’s a chance that it could even be placed inside of certain weapons.”

“Would that not disrupt it’s access to the rest of the technology on the planet?” The idea that an AI was capable of multitasking on a large scale wasn’t exactly unreasonable. However, the notion that it could micromanage something as small and insignificant as weaponry felt like a bit of a stretch.

“An AI big enough to control all the technology on the planet is capable of multitasking, so it’s plausible that it  _ could _ be stuffed inside a few weapons,” Fox said, shrugging. “I’m guessing they would have to be pretty big or important ones though. I doubt the AI would care very much about guns and whatnot.”

“And  _ if _ the chairman is able to do this, what sort of weapons would he utilize through it?” 

“Probably something like  _ ShowStopper,”  _ Fox replied.

Behind his helmet, Locus blinked. “The radio channel?”

“No, no, my  _ shield, _ ” Fox said. “It has a standard-issue ‘dumb’ AI in it. It’s what keeps it in the air so long and allows it to synch up with my implants. But if it had a ‘smart’ AI in it, like CORA or the AI on Chorus, I could probably do  _ way _ more with it.”

“You’re suggesting that the chairman would use it to make specialized weapons.” The idea was certainly worrisome. Charon was in no way short of resources, and if they were to be upgraded, Chorus would find itself in deeper water than it already was. 

“Again, I’m just speculating here,” Fox shrugged. “I literally haven’t had contact with Charon in  _ months _ , and they  _ certainly _ didn’t tell me any of their plans going forwards. I- oh-” she cut off and glanced over at the window. “It seems my time is up,” she sighed, standing suddenly and looking back at him. “Maybe we can talk about this more later? I don’t know. You’ve been helpful though!”

Locus had the sense that she was trying to be optimistic for his sake. He watched as she walked over to the door, but paused before it and looked back at him.

“Hang in there,” she said, then stepped through the door.

 

* * *

 

“I should have gone with you. This was stupid. I shouldn’t have stayed behind!”

“It wasn’t--”

“I mean, you go up to the moon on some crazy mission that you might never return from, fight a monster AI, and bring back  _ Locus _ ?! I should have been up there with you! You could have been killed!”

“Doc--”

“And- And  _ zombies?! _ The  _ undead?! _ And you  _ fought _ them?! You were off fighting the supernatural, Donut! What if you’d been bitten?! Aloe and orange juice won’t fix zombie-ism!”

_ “Doc!” _

Doc took a deep breath.  _ Count to ten. Find your happy place.  _ “I was  _ worried, _ ” he said, trying to keep his voice even, holding his clipboard tightly against his side.

Donut shrugged and his eyes slid to the side and his mouth did that awkward little half smile-but-not-really that he always did when he was cornered. “I  _ know _ .”

And Doc just let out a long sigh, and let the tension leave his shoulders. “Are you okay, at least? You weren’t hurt?”

“Nah. I got a few bruises, but that’s probably it,” Donut said, grinning wide enough for Doc to see the gap where one of his teeth had been knocked out by a grenade blast, and leaning back against the office wall.

“Are you  _ sure?” _

“Yeah, really, I’m fine!” Donut said. 

Doc gave Donut a tired smile. “I’m happy you’re okay.”

“So am I.”

Doc nodded, mostly to himself, then leaned in and kissed Donut. 

“Doc, you weren’t just trying to get me alone for  _ that _ , were you?”

Doc glared at him. “I wanted to make sure you were  _ okay _ .”

Donut laughed. “I know, I know. I should probably get going though,” he said, looking down at the helmet in his hands. He raised his eyes at Doc, “we’ll catch up later though, yeah?”

“Of course.”

Donut gave him another grin, then put his helmet on. “Oh shit!”

“What?”

“I got a notification like, two minutes ago telling me to meet Kimball in her office! I’m gonna be late!”

“Well,  _ hurry! _ ” Doc exclaimed, shooing Donut out of his office.

“Okay, bye Doc! I’ll see you at dinner hopefully!”

Doc watched him head down the hall, almost running into a nurse in his haste, and shook his head. “Hopefully,” he said.

 

 

* * *

 

Letting Fox converse with Locus had been….insightful. Though it hadn’t produced as many answers as Kimball had hoped. If anything, the most information she had gathered from the conversation was that Locus trusted Fox far more than she had anticipated. He was certainly more willing to talk to her than he had been when  _ she _ was in the room. Kimball didn’t need to think very hard as to why that might be. 

The other woman gave off a certain air of...calm. She didn’t seem at all intimidated by Locus, and had been more than willing to simply talk to him like he  _ wasn’t _ a prisoner. Furthermore, Locus seemed to have an amount of respect for her knowledge of technology and the ideas that she had about it. All information that Kimball decided would be useful later if push came to shove.

She thought about all of this as she watched Fox from across the holo-projection table. After allowing her to have a talk with Locus, she had summoned her, Agents Carolina and Washington, and the Reds and Blues to her office to discuss moving forward. On the way there, Fox had answered all of her questions about the mission to Nalome, sparing no detail, and Kimball couldn’t help but wish that she had known about the operation on the moon sooner. 

As the last of the Reds filed into her office (spluttering out an apology and something about seeing Doc), she received a message over comms from one of her men that Locus had been returned to a holding cell and was receiving treatment for his injuries. Kimball made a mental note to thank Doctor Grey later. 

She looked up, noting how everyone was waiting patiently for her, and cleared her throat. “I called all of you here to update you on the current situation. We now have information that leads us to believe that Hargrove knows about Santa.” Kimball felt a wave of exasperation wash over her when Fox raised her hand. “Yes?”

“Is Santa the AI?”

“Yes.”

“Is that...like it’s  _ real _ name? Or…”

“That isn’t important,” Kimball sighed, frustrated. “What’s important is what you discussed with Locus earlier about the potential of the AI being implanted in weapons.” She paused, noting how when she mentioned Locus, everyone looked over at Fox in surprise. “What information do you have that makes you think that would be his course of action?”

“Well…” Fox began, seeming a bit taken off guard to be put in the spotlight. “When CORA was updated, it gave her access to the weapons system that Charon had built on the moon. I should probably mention that it was meant to  _ defend _ the planet, rather than...you know...blow it up. But things changed, obviously. CORA was likely a test run of sorts, and we were the guinea pigs. He probably wanted to see how powerful the AI would need to be in order to control all of the technology on the planet. Clearly, the test failed, because I was able to override much of the code and firewall her off from  _ everything. _ Assuming she was plan B, then when...Felix, was it? When he reported the presence of the AI to Hargrove, and proceeded to fail to exterminate everyone on this planet, Hargrove switched to plan C; which was to fuck everything seven ways to Sunday. Since he now knows that there  _ is _ an alien AI on the planet, he’s probably going to try to come up with a plan D, and take control of it, gain access through it to all of the remaining alien technology on this planet, exterminate everyone here with excessive force, and then go on to profit off of everything.”

“Church made sure that he couldn’t hurt us again!”

Kimball looked on as Fox turned to face Caboose when he spoke up. “Church?” she asked.

“He was...a friend...of ours,” Wash explained, clearly uncomfortable.

“Pretty powerful friend to render Hargrove helpless,” Fox mused.

“He was an AI. Epsilon; that was his name.  _ One _ of his names,” Carolina clarified, glancing over at Caboose. 

“Wait, wait, wait.  _ The _ Epsilon!? The one who sent out that big message about all of the shit Hargrove’s pulled!?” Fox exclaimed.

“Yeah!” Tucker replied.

“Oh boy,” Fox chuckled and shook her head. “That’s...uh-”

“Is there a problem?” Kimball asked. She had been expecting something like excitement and gratitude from Fox upon hearing of what Epsilon did, not...whatever this was. 

“Little bit,” Fox replied, turning so she could look at the Reds and Blues without straining her neck. “What Epsilon did was….helpful.”

“But  _ what? _ ” There was a hint of a threat in Tucker’s voice when he spoke. 

“But he needed to do  _ way  _ better. We need to gather  _ solid _ evidence if we’re going to take Hargrove down,” Fox said, looking over at Kimball.

“Epsilon already did that,” Carolina said, sounding a little confused.

“ _ Epsilon _ was a careless  _ whistleblower _ ,” Fox replied, turning her head towards her. “The only reason Hargrove isn’t in a cell right now is because of  _ how _ he broadcasted it. There was no warning, no prior investigation of Charon Industries underway, and with the shit the chairman pulled that yanked the rug out from beneath Project Freelancer, he looked like a goddamned white knight to the U.N.S.C. And now because of the broadcast, the media is going nuts, and the U.N.S.C. is scrambling to piece together hard evidence from a more credible source than an AI from a defunded project. And I promise you, in cases like these, where you’ve got someone with money and influence, big and loud isn’t how you want to handle it. But big and loud is what Epsilon did, and now we have to figure out how to work around it.”

“So what?” Tucker growled, bristling, “are you saying that everything he did was for  _ nothing? _ ”

Fox put her hands up defensively. “Look, I’m not trying to insult him, alright? But the truth of the matter is, all good intentions aside, he  _ did _ make things trickier for the rest of us.”

“How’s that?” Kimball asked.

“Well,” Fox said, “I know that  _ The Staff of Charon _ was in bad condition after coming here. Right now, it’s probably in the next system over getting repairs. Once the ship is back up and running smoothly, it’s going to head for Earth.”

“Earth?” Kimball echoed, not wasting time trying to mask her confusion.

“Hargrove has friends there. People with money and power, and the means to exert it however they want,” Fox explained. “He’s going to use them to keep his head above the water until the investigation blows over, chances are.”

“He’s going to clean house,” Simmons realized, horrified. 

“Bingo,” Fox said. 

“So we find a bunch of people who hate him just as much as we do, and we make ‘em talk!” Sarge exclaimed.

“Except, like Simmons said, Hargrove is cleaning house, so…” Fox trailed off, and Kimball didn’t need to think very hard to figure out where she was heading.

“He’s going to eliminate anyone who could testify against him,” Kimball finished; the grim reality of the situation settling like a dark cloud in the room as she spoke.

“Just like he tried to do with all of you,” Fox affirmed, nodding. “And just like he will undoubtedly try to do again.”

This wasn’t exactly news to Kimball. They had been expecting another move against them since the  _ Staff of Charon _ had disappeared on the horizon. “We’ve been preparing for that,” she stated.

“Good, because it’s probably coming sooner than you think,” Fox replied. “It’s been a week since that asshole ran off with his tail between his legs. If he’s gotten that ship to a station, then there’s a good chance he’s already hired some new people to raise some hell.”

“Even after Epsilon’s broadcast?” Grif asked.

“I think you’d be surprised what people would be willing to risk for a paycheck,” Fox replied evenly, looking back at him. 

“After meeting Locus, I doubt it,” Tucker muttered.

“Is that all?” Kimball asked. 

“For now,” Fox replied. 

Kimball nodded, a feeling of unease creeping up her spine, as she processed everything she’d learned. “Very good. Fox, I want you to stay behind to answer a few more questions.” When she finished addressing Fox, she turned to the others. “The rest of you are dismissed. Go get some rest, then report to the training deck with your lieutenants first thing tomorrow. I know you all likely expected some time to recover from this last mission, but unfortunately, that is not the case. Until further notice, we must assume that everything we’ve learned is true, and prepare accordingly. Because if Fox is right, it’s only a matter of time until Charon comes back for seconds.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Epsilon was an AI from Project Freelancer. AKA the one that everyone involved got fucking arrested for. There’s no way the U.N.S.C. is gonna look at what he put out and be like “yeah we 100% agree with this AI who HAPPENS to be from the project that got attacked by MALCOM FUCKING HARGROVE AKA THE GUY BEING ACCUSED OF ALL THIS”. And seriously, you can’t tell me that Hargrove wasn’t just like “DELETE EVERYTHING” the second that message went out. He’s a tricky motherfucker like that. 
> 
> Meanwhile Locus is just in the corner like a puppy being scolded. For murder. Lots of murder. Bad dog.  
> While we’re on the topic of animal personas, Simmons would be a parakeet. Don’t ask me why. It just works. Sarge would probably be a rabbit. But I digress.
> 
> Doc is my nervous purple son and also a good boyfriend. *Sheds tear*  
> Writing Kimball’s perspective is fun, especially when she’s dealing with Locus.   
> The title is a pun, by the way. Get it? Cuz Locus and Fox had a little talk? A “small” talk? It’s funny.


	11. Enemy of My Enemy

The next day and a half passed….slowly. Unfortunately, time tends to progress at a crawl when one is stuck in a cell. Locus figured this out only a few hours in. At least the healing unit was working. Doctor Grey had been generous enough to give him one that was much stronger than what Fox had lent him. But she hadn’t done much more than that. It seemed strange, especially considering how she had chattered on like she knew the extent of his injuries. Fox had to have said something to someone for her to have found out. He still wasn’t sure if he should be grateful or irritated by the fact.

They hadn’t bothered to try to get him out of his armor yet; a fact which left him with at least a small sense of security. Though he wasn’t sure how long that would last. So far, he had heard very little. The cell they were keeping him in was a dead zone where no signals could get through. He had already tried the channel Fox had told him about twice, mostly just to see if he could get it to work, to no avail. So he was forced to rely on the chatter he heard past the thick walls from the guards, though they hadn’t said anything of particular interest so far.

Out of boredom and stress, he had taken to pacing the length of the small room. At least it didn’t hurt so much to walk now. In fact, in the day and a half since he had arrived back on Chorus, most of his wounds had healed quickly. It was the only benefit he had received so far.

Back and forth. Back and forth. Locus stared at the ground as he paced, considering his options. Fox had seemed willing to try to help him. But he wasn’t sure to what extent. Back on Nalome, she had positioned herself firmly between the Reds, Blues, and Freelancers and him. He wasn’t exactly surprised that had changed once they arrived on Chorus, but it _did_ seem odd to him how intensely she had seemed to try to get on his good side.

What exactly did she want?

There was very little he could offer her. She already had information on what had occurred on Chorus. She already had his... _file_ , and whatever was in it. And she had a number of... semi-competent... soldiers whom she had no doubt befriended by now. He couldn’t see a reason why she would still be interested in him. During their last conversation, he had given her everything he had left that could possibly still be helpful to her. Which meant that his usefulness to her had run its course.

With a sigh, he gave up on pacing, and sat down in the corner of the cell with his back to the wall. He had never been much of one to rely on hope. Fox had always been a dead-end road, and he had known that from the start. But it didn’t him from feeling a glimmer of disappointment. She could have been a way out, in a different world. Maybe. He could have used her.

But instead, he was stuck in a cell, contemplating his choices, waiting for something to happen. His frustration was overwhelmed by exasperation and weariness. It had been weeks since he’d been in a position where he could simply let himself heal. So he opted to shut his mind off for a little bit, and leaned back against the wall, crossing his arms and closing his eyes, listening to the ambience of overhead lights.

It would have been almost peaceful, had the alarms not started only a second later.

 

* * *

 

“Full report!” Kimball barked as she entered the command center. An hour ago, a slipspace distortion had been detected, and they had been tracking it ever since. Apparently, the ship that had come out of it wasn’t friendly.

“Small spacecraft with no U.N.S.C. identification dropped out of slipspace a minute ago. It’s a rogue ship, ma’am,” came the reply from one of the soldiers at the monitors.

“Have we hailed them yet?”

“Yes ma’am. No response.”

Kimball looked up at one of the screens that showed a radar image of the ship. It was drawing closer with every second. “I want everyone at their stations and preparing for a fight,” she said.

“Yes ma’am.” Kimball listened as the soldier who had spoken relayed a series of orders over comms. Beeping from one of the monitors drew her attention, and she looked up at the radar image again and watched with grim comprehension as four smaller objects launched themselves away from the ship.

“We’ve got four dropships entering the atmosphere!” one of the soldiers updated.

“Keep me updated, and stay on top of those ships. I want to know where they land,” Kimball ordered, and turned, exiting the command center.

The hallway outside was chaos, with soldiers running in every direction. Kimball navigated her way through it all down to the lower deck, listening to the updates about the dropships being broadcasted by the command center. As she walked, she contacted her captains and leading officers and relayed their orders to them. The ships were coming in from the southeast, which meant that their occupants intended on cutting through the jungle to reach them. An ambitious plan that Kimball intended to never allow to come to fruition. Her men knew the terrain. Their enemies didn’t. They already had one advantage.

“Ma’am we just received word from one of the scout patrols that two of the ships are loaded with Warthogs. We’ve also detected a shift in thermal activity to the north. It appears to be a platoon of soldiers. About twenty-count.”

Kimball felt her heart sink as the news came in over comms. Whoever these men were, they must have somehow gotten into contact with the remaining space pirates on Chorus. “Relay the information to Captains Simmons and Caboose and have them hold that side.”

“Copy.”

As she rounded the corner she came across Carolina, who fell into step at her side. “Carolina,” Kimball said, acknowledging her, “I want you and Agent Washington to take Captain Tucker and his team behind enemy lines and put pressure on them from the rear. If we can keep them from spreading out through the jungle, we’ll have a better chance of controlling the fight with our current numbers.”

“Understood,” Carolina replied. “What about Fox?”

“She stays put.”

“When the alarms started, she said she wanted to help us fight.”

“I’ll deal with her later.”

“General Kimball!” came an all-too-familiar voice.

 _Or, I’ll deal with her now,_ Kimball groaned inwardly as Fox caught up to them. “Go on ahead,” she said to Carolina. Then she looked over at Fox. “I know you want to help; so go down to the medical bay and assist Doctor Grey,” she said curtly.

“I can fight,” Fox insisted.

“We have plenty of soldiers. We can handle this.”

“With all due respect, you don’t even know what you’re _dealing_ with!” Fox exclaimed, and Kimball stopped and turned to face her, irritation swelling up inside of her.

“Neither do _you._ I gave you an option to help; and it is the _only_ option I have available for you. So take it or leave it.”

“Carolina showed you that metal ball thing I gave her, right? She told me earlier,” Fox said, changing the subject suddenly. “It’s a shield. It acts sort of like a boomerang, though. I can throw it, and it can cut through power armor like butter. It responds to my implants, and I’ve already gone through the list of individuals here and marked them all as friendlies in my helmet’s HUD, so it won’t hurt any of your men. I can do _way_ more damage with that thing that your men can with their guns.”

“That’s not-”

“ _And_ ,” Fox continued, cutting her off, “I’ve already got someone who knows how it works, and can fight alongside me in tandem with it.”

Kimball stared at her. This was a lot of information to process, and she didn’t have time to settle on details. “The Reds, Blues, and Agents Washington and Carolina are all preoccupied at the moment. I’m sorry, but you’re going to need to sit this one out. We can discuss this at a later date--”

“I wasn’t talking about any of them,” Fox blurted out.

And it felt like an icy hand had wrapped itself around Kimball’s stomach and squeezed. “Absolutely not,” she growled. “If you think I’d even _consider_ giving that son of a bitch a chance to do even _more_ damage--”

“He _won’t!_ Jesus, Kimball, I wouldn’t suggest it if I didn’t think it would work!” Fox countered. “I was in your shoes only a few days ago! And if I hadn’t enlisted his help, _none_ of us would have gotten off of that moon alive.”

“This is different,” Kimball hissed, and started walking again. She didn’t look over when Fox jogged to catch up with her. “He’s responsible for the deaths of _thousands_ of innocent people. The civil war was started by _him._ We already have enough damage to clean up without his interference. The last thing we need is for him to make things worse--”

Kimball cut off when a loud boom echoed through the cavern, and looked over as some loose rocks slid free from one of the walls and crashed to the ground, barely missing a group of soldiers as they ran by.

“No disrespect, but I don’t think things could get much worse than this,” Fox observed, looking over at the rubble. Then, “look, I can keep him on a tight leash. And if he tries anything, I can either subdue or kill him. It’s up to you. But I really think that using him in this fight would be beneficial.”

“Neither of you are going _anywhere_ ,” Kimball snapped, fed up with the conversation. She didn’t have time for this.

“Why _not?!_ We’re _assets_ Kimball! So _use_ us!”

“And how do I know that Locus won’t just turn on us and try to escape?! Have you thought of that?”

“He said he was willing to help!” Fox exclaimed. “We both said that we wanted to help! Jesus, Kimball, you have nothing to _lose_ here! It’s not like we’re going to hurt any of your men; you’d just kill us if we did. And if one of us gets hurt, then so _what?!_ It’s better us than your men, anyways!”

Kimball sucked in a breath and let it out slowly, the desire to argue quickly fleeing as she realized that Fox had a somewhat reasonable point. It was true that they were at a disadvantage, after so much damage had been done during their final assault on the mercenaries, and just Locus alone could do enough damage to counter their odds. “What would you have me _do_ , then?” she asked bitterly.

Fox relaxed a little, and straightened up, meeting her gaze. “We didn’t have to come back here, but we did anyways because we wanted to help, Kimball. So let us help.”

 

* * *

 

Locus never could have expected the door to his cell to slide open at a time like this. Nor could he have anticipated that Fox would be standing on the other side of it, with his weapons in a duffel bag under one arm, and the two soldiers who had been guarding his cell cowering behind her.

“About face, Sunshine. We’re going to collect some space pirate heads!” Fox exclaimed, tossing the duffel bag to him.

He quickly equipped the weapons, keeping a wary eye on the two guards. “Where are we headed?” he asked as he finished.

“Come on, I’ll explain on the way,” Fox said, gesturing for him to follow with a hand and starting off down the hall.

Locus stared after her for a moment, still trying to process that fact that he was no longer  in a _cell_ , then passed the duffel bag off to one of the guards and hurried after her. “Is the General aware of what you’re doing?”

“Yep! I asked her nicely if I could borrow you. You’re good to fight, right?”

“...Yes.”

“Great!” Fox said, scanning them through the doors at the end of the hall and leading him into the main circuit.

Locus looked around, noting how empty the halls seemed. “What’s going on?”

“We’re under attack by a happy mix of space pirates and some assholes that Hargrove probably hired to kill everyone here. Typical Sunday here, I’m guessing,” Fox replied.

Locus followed her in silence for a moment, processing this. If the chairman had gotten into contact with the space pirates, then there was a chance he believed him either dead...or had figured out that he’d defected. Locus wasn’t sure which he preferred. He looked over at Fox, noticing the shield base on her hip. “You’re fighting too, then?”

“Yup,” Fox replied. “Oh, and I should tell you, _ShowStopper_ cuts through armor like it’s nothing, so don’t go getting any cute ideas. I have orders to incapacitate you if you do anything stupid like try to kill one of Kimball’s men. Or escape. Or both. Bottom line; be smart, or you lose a leg. Capiche?”

So that’s how it was. Locus had figured there would be boundaries in place. Truth was, he was more surprised that Fox hadn’t been ordered to simply kill him. “Understood,” he replied.

“Great,” Fox said, and took in a breath like she was going to speak again, but he cut her off.

“I’m not killing anyone.”

And Fox froze, and tilted her head slightly at him, appearing to be caught off guard by the statement. She was quiet for a moment, and appeared to be thinking hard about what she wanted to say. “Look, I get you wanna turn over a new leaf,” she began. “Really, I do. But these guys aren’t going to play nice with us. They are going to try to _kill_ everyone here. And there’s way too many of them from what I’ve heard for us to just talk them out of a fight.”

And Locus felt something ugly start to work its way up his throat. Because if all of Kimball’s men were out in the field, then it meant that Fox was right, and that there _were_ too many, and that he was going to have to do the one thing he told himself he was done with.

Fox seemed to notice his frustration, and took a breath, continuing in a softer voice. “I’m going to be honest, I don’t like killing people either. I’m good at it, but I don’t like it. So let’s compromise, okay?”

And Locus sighed, because he knew he didn’t have a choice.

“We’re both going to need to kill some people today. That’s a very obvious given. _But,_ you can try to talk anyone you run into out of a fight. And you can try to pacify as many pirates as you like.” She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was firm. “ _However,_ if they can’t be stopped. If you wind up outnumbered, or cornered, or in a situation where you can’t talk someone down, you _have_ to take them out, understand?” Fox took a breath and watched him for a moment, then continued. “It’s a big fish eat little fish world out there, and these guys don’t play nice, so I need you to understand that even if you don’t _want_ to hurt people, you’re going to have to, and you need to find a way to deal with it. I’m here. I get it. And we can talk about it later. But right now, I need you to focus and be ready to do whatever it takes to help out Kimball and her men, got it?”

Locus stared at her tiredly. He hated how right she was. He hated how much sense her words made. And he hated that he couldn’t stick to what he’d promised himself at the Tower of Communication. “Fine,” he said.

Fox gave him a satisfied nod, then spoke up again, “so here’s how it’s gonna work; I’m usually a steamroller, courtesy of _ShowStopper._ So I’m going to be handling a lot of the groundwork. You’re job is to cover me until most of the bad guys are down, then you can climb out of that crow’s nest and start micromanaging. You’ve got cloaking, so you should be able to do a bit of damage with that.” She stopped suddenly and turned to face him, putting her back to the entrance of the cavern that hid the New Republic Headquarters from view. “Oh, and one last thing,” she said when he stopped in front of her. “We might all be on the same side here, but a lot of Kimball’s men probably won’t believe it. So don’t expect any gratitude from them, okay?”

Locus couldn’t help but feel a little irritated at this but nodded anyways.

“Great!” Fox exclaimed, clapping her hands together. And then, with a smile in her voice said, “those pirates are gonna wish they’d never heard of Chorus.”

 

* * *

 

Tucker held his breath as he watched Wash creep up to one of the enemy Pelicans, a low to the ground with a knife in his hand. Ahead, with his back to the approaching Marine, was a space pirate. Tucker watched as Wash grabbed him suddenly from behind, putting one hand over his visor and forcing his head back and jamming the knife into the man’s throat. The pirate let out a weak gurgle and went limp, and Wash set him gently on the ground to minimize the sound of impact.

Tucker pulled his gaze away from Wash and leaned to get a better view of the group of pirates who had gathered in front of the two Pelicans. So far, they hadn’t noticed anything.

Carolina had already taken care of the pirate by the other Pelican, and had dragged his corpse back into the dropship. Wash was in the process of doing the same.

 _Hurry, hurry, hurry,_ Tucker thought, once again looking at the group of pirates. They had split into two groups, and one of them, presumably their leader, was pointing in the directions he wanted them to head in. One group to head towards the west, the other to press forwards as is.

“That’s a fuckton of guys.” Tucker looked over when he heard Palomo speak. The young lieutenant’s gaze was locked on the two groups of pirates.

And Tucker had to agree. In front of them, there were around forty men. Two more Pelicans had brought in forty more. And according to an update from the command center, the leftover space pirates that had been brought to Chorus by Locus and Felix had also mobilized and were moving in on headquarters. But instead of bringing any of this up, he simply replied with, “we’ve kicked their sorry asses before. We can do it again.”

“These people are way more organized that the last pirates we dealt with.” Tucker looked over when Carolina appeared by his side. “We’re going to need to exercise far more caution than we did before.” She didn’t look at him when she spoke, and instead kept her eyes on the two groups of pirates, who had begun to move out.

“So what’s the plan?” Tucker asked, looking over when he saw Wash lean out of the Pelican he had dragged the pirate’s body into. He gave his teammate a thumbs up to signal he was clear to move.

“Disable both Pelicans so they can’t be used to retreat. Ep-” Carolina cut off before she could get the name out, and seemed to choke on her words. But Wash crept back to her side just as she did, and continued for her.

“Tucker, have two of your men stay here with some charges. If any of the pirates come back, and they can’t defend the Pelicans, destroy them. It would be nice to bring them back to headquarters, but if we can’t, then we won’t.”

“Makes sense,” Tucker said with a nod, and turned back to his team of four. “Hodges, McDevitt, you two stay here. The rest of you-” He cut off suddenly as a loud boom roared through the trees, immediately followed by the sound of shouting and gunfire.

“That wasn’t ours,” Carolina said. “We’d have heard something over comms.”

“We should get moving,” Wash replied. “Tucker, you and the rest of your men follow the pirates that went straight on, Carolina and I will follow the other group.” He stood and turned to Tucker. “Good luck,” he said with a nod. Then he and Carolina were gone.

Tucker gave his men a nod, stood, and started forward.

It didn’t take them long to come across what had happened. One of the enemy Warthogs had been severed clean in half by...something. On the ground around the smoking wreckage were five bodies of pirates, two of which looked as though they had been...cut apart.

“What the fuck?” Tucker looked over when Palomo spoke.

“Dude, I’m gonna be sick,” another one of his men gasped.

Tucker stared at the carnage, listening to his surroundings. The sound of fighting was several kilometers off in the distance. “Stay low,” he instructed, and began forward slowly, gun at the ready. He tried not to pay too much mind to the sound his feet made as they sunk into the blood-soaked ground with every step.

He led his men to where the jungle dropped off to the valley that hid the entrance to the New Republic headquarters. As he watched the scene before him, he felt his stomach drop. The group of pirates they had been tailing was already making their way down. And below, taking heavy fire, were Kimball’s men.

“Rooks, Gale, you cut them off from behind. Palomo, you stick with me. We’re taking them from the front,” Tucker said, turning and starting off along the edge of the cliff.

“Wait are we…?” Palomo trailed off, excitement in his voice.

“You motherfucking _bet_ we are!” Tucker exclaimed back.

Three seconds later two of the pirates on the trail down to the valley were knocked down under the weight of the two marines as they leapt off the edge of the small cliff to intercept them.

“Holy fuck that’s bad on the knees!” Palomo groaned as he scurried to his feet, whirling around and whacking another pirate in the head with the butt of his submachine.

“Hey, it _worked!_ ” Tucker said, activating his sword and shoving it through the gut of another pirate. He turned as the pirate he had landed on pulled himself to his feet and lunged, managing to catch Tucker off-guard with an uppercut to the chin.

“ _Fuck,_ dude! That--” Tucker cut off when he heard the bang of a sniper rifle echo through the valley, followed by a yell from behind him. He stole a glance backwards and watched in horror as Rooks collapsed over the edge of the trail, a bullet hole in his visor. He quickly blocked another punch from the pirate, and ducked out of the way when he finally got his gun back in his hands and started firing.

“Fucker!” Palomo cried and leapt on his back, wrapping both arms around the pirate’s neck, choking him. The pirate stumbled back, and his gunfire trained upwards past Tucker. Tucker took the opportunity and slashed the pirate across the chest with his sword. The man let out a wet gurgle, and Palomo let go, stumbling back and watching as the man staggered and crumpled to the ground.

“Assholes,” Tucker spat, turning back to Gale, and freezing when he saw the soldier curled up on the ground, with blood pooling around him. “Shit,” he hissed, looking around, trying to find, someone, trying to find _help_. First Rooks, then Gale. This couldn’t be happening. It wasn’t until he saw a flicker of red in the corner of his eye that he remembered the sniper. He turned and tackled Palomo, right as another bang resounded through the valley.

“Jesus fu- Oh shit- _Tucker!”_ Tucker barely had time to register that they had landed far too close to the edge of the trail before both he and Palmo went over.

They hit the ground hard, and for a moment, the sounds of gunfire and shouting seemed distant, and all Tucker could see was the cloud-darkened sky. But the sound of a gun being cocked far too close for comfort brought him back to reality and he scrambled upwards and whirled, finding himself staring down the nose of a pirate’s gun.

“Well, shit,” Palomo said as he dragged himself into a sitting position beside him. There was blood on one of his shoulder guards.

“Looks like we caught ourselves a couple of termites,” the pirate declared. The two on either side of him laughed.

Tucker glanced around, looking for something, _anything_ that he could use to get them out of this. His sword was on the ground just out of reach. He could try to dive for it, but that would just leave Palomo exposed. Palomo’s gun was several feet away; also a terrible choice. And the rest of Kimball’s men were already too busy trying to fight off the rest of the pirates.

“Got any last words?” the pirate in front asked.

“Eat a dick,” Tucker snarled.

“Classy,” the pirate chuckled, and raised his gun.

He never had the chance to pull the trigger. If Tucker had blinked, he would have missed the blur of silver and blue that shot past him, and lopped off the heads of the three pirates. He stumbled backwards, hands reaching to wipe away the blood that had spattered across his visor, keeping an eye on what appeared to be a silver...frisbee? He watched as it arced back, and headed straight for them. “Shit, _Palomo-”_ He cut off suddenly when the disc shot up _past_ them. Tucker turned to look to see where it was going, and watched in shock as it was caught by a figure crouching on the trail above them in black and blue armor.

“Fox?!” Tucker exclaimed. He watched as Fox rose, stepped back, and then launched herself over the edge of the trail, executing a perfect double-twist mid-air before landing gracefully on both feet in front of them.

“‘Sup,” she said. “Sorry about the blood splatter.” She then turned and flung the disc away from her. Tucker watched as it took the head off of another pirate before curving sharply and returning to her. Fox caught it, the disc hovering above her hand, and looked back at him. “Well, don’t just stand there. You’re in a fight! Act like it!” Then she charged away in the direction of a cluster of space pirates who had pinned several Federation soldiers behind cover. Tucker watched as she made quick work of them, using the disc to cut through the pirates like scissors through paper. He wasn’t sure if he should be sick or impressed.

Pulling his eyes away, he grabbed his sword and activated it, and looked back at Palomo, who had his gun back in his hands. “Captain Tucker?” Palomo asked.

“Uh…” Tucker looked around, eyes falling on Sarge as he charged in on a Warthog yelling blood and vinegar. “Let’s go help the Reds,” he said, his voice cracking from the shock of what he’d just witnessed. This was going to be a hell of a fight.

 

* * *

 

“Something’s jamming us. Long-range communications aren’t working!”

Kimball groaned inwardly. When her attempt to broadcast to her men that Locus was out in the field fighting alongside them had failed, she had gone back to the command station for answers, hoping that it was nothing serious. But of course it had turned out to be something like this. “Do you know how?”

“No ma’am, but I’m certain it’s not coming from their ship,” the soldier who had spoken before replied.

Kimball’s hands balled into fists at her sides. “Stay here. Let me know if anything changes,” she ordered, turning and putting her gun in her hands before she stormed out. Her men needed her, and she needed to find Simmons.

 

 

* * *

 

Steamrolling was...an appropriate word to describe was Fox was doing, Locus decided. They had only joined the fight a few minutes ago, and she had already delivered devastating amounts of damage to the space pirates. She was certainly a graceful fighter, executing a series of flips and mid-air twists to gain momentum before she threw her shield, always landing on her feet. At one point, she had even climbed up onto a rock structure, just to throw the weapon into the forest, and somehow managed to hit what must have been some sort of vehicle, judging by the explosion that had billowed up above the treeline mere seconds later. How she had known there were enemy forces there, he couldn’t guess, but it was certainly something to take note of.

He watched through the scope of his rifle as Fox took out three space pirates who had cornered Tucker and his lieutenant, then charged off to assist another group of soldiers who were heavily outgunned.

To Fox’s left was a pirate who had taken notice of her, that she hadn’t realized was there. Before he could fire his gun, however, Locus put a bullet through his head. “Watch your six,” he growled to Fox over comms when she turned and saw the pirate’s corpse.

“Thanks hon!” she replied, not giving any indication that she had heard a single word he said.

With a sigh, Locus reloaded, then looked for his next target. He watched as Fox ran at a troop of space pirates who had just come out from behind cover. She leapt up and kicked off of the cliffside and launched herself at the first pirate, driving both feet into his face while flinging her shield at the other three. All four were down in an instant.

“Hey by the way, how’s that other sniper doing?” Fox asked casually over comms while running and executing a perfect backflip over another pirate and slicing him in half.

Locus pulled away from his scope and looked over at the unconscious space pirate slumped under a tree a few feet away from him. “He’s busy.”

“Aw, too bad. You guys could’ve hung out. Share some cool gunnie stories or whatever.”

Locus put a bullet through the head of a pirate who had just hefted a rocket launcher onto his shoulder. “Can you _focus?_ ” he said coldly.

“Uh, yeah. Can you?” Fox replied. He watched as she knocked the gun out of a space pirate’s hand, then pulled him in close so the sides of their helmets touched, threw up a peace sign with one hand, and said over comms, “say cheese!”

Locus put a bullet through the pirate’s head, curling his lip. She _had_ to be doing this on purpose.

Fox stepped back and caught her shield one-handed as it flew back to her. Then, without looking at him, gave a thumbs up. At least she had the decency not to expose his position.

A yell below to his left drew his attention, and he watched through his scope as a soldier he recognized as Jensen hit the ground with a bullet wound in her leg just below the knee. Her cry had drawn more than just his eyes however, as he noted that a two space pirates had started towards her. He thought about taking care of them, but the wind was picking up from the approaching storm, and with how they were ducking in and out of cover, he’d never get a clear shot. He was considering simply letting them get to Jensen and focusing on assisting Fox when a figure in white and purple armor appeared by her side.

 _Doctor Grey_ , he realized. And for a moment he hesitated, looking back at where Fox was engaged with a group of pirates who had ganged up on an injured Federation soldier. Grey had helped him. Grey had patched him up and given him a healing unit. He _owed_ her. With a frustrated sigh, Locus stood and holstered the sniper rifle on his back, then reached for his sword.

This was a terrible idea. But it was the right thing to do.

 

 

* * *

 

“That’s twenty!” Sarge bellowed as he shattered a pirate’s visor with a shotgun blast.

“Fuck you, you’re cheating!” Tucker exclaimed, slashing the back of a pirate’s knee and impaling him as he went down.

“Says who!”

“Says _me!_ ” Tucker yelled, leaping over a large rock and slamming a foot into the face of the pirate taking cover behind it. “Those three guys you ran over a minute ago don’t _count!_ ” he exclaimed as he pulled out his pistol and shot the pirate in the throat.

“Yer just jealous ‘cause you didn’t think to do it first!” Sarge shouted at him, chucking a grenade at a pirate who was trying to climb up the large stone slab to where he was. The pirate let out a yelp of terror that was quickly cut off by the blast.

Tucker stumbled and almost fell when a chunk of the pirate struck him from behind. He whirled to make a snappy comment at Sarge for it, but stopped when he saw the other marine holding out the pirate’s detached arm.

“Need a hand, Blue?”

“Fuck off!” Tucker exclaimed, batting the hand away. He looked over suddenly when he heard the sound of an engine revving. “Oh shit.”

A Warthog loaded with pirates skidded around the corner and headed straight towards where Simmons, Donut and Caboose had taken cover.

“Guys!” Tucker shouted as Sarge barked out, “git outta there!” Tucker leapt off the stone slab and ran towards the two, not even considering the consequences. But a flash of movement to his left drew his eye, and he watched as Fox sprinted towards the Warthog from the side. He didn’t have time to wonder what she was doing before she dropped to the ground as the vehicle passed adjacent to her, and _slid under it_ . There was a flash of blue as she did so, and by the time she was out on the other side, the Warthog had split in _half_ , the two parts of it tumbling to a stop mere feet from where Caboose, Simmons, and Donut were.

 ** _[TARGET ELIMINATED]_** Freckles said as Caboose raised his gun and fired on one of the pirates who had been lucky enough to crawl out of the wreckage in mostly one piece.

“What was that?” Caboose asked, holding Freckles close once the pirate was dead.

“Holy fuck!” Donut yelped, too surprised for innuendos.

“Jesus _shit!”_ Simmons squeaked, stumbling back.

“What in Sam hill?” Sarge exclaimed, nearly dropping his shotgun in shock.

“Hey Fox,” Tucker sighed, relieved that none of his friends had been hurt.

“‘Sup,” Fox said, standing and dusting herself off. She looked over to where the other two space pirates had started climbing out of the wreckage. “So how many points is that?” she asked.

“Wait, you heard us?” Tucker asked.

“You _were_ shouting,” Fox said, holding her shield before her with one hand, and swiping the bloodied edge of it with a finger from the other, spinning it.

“Three,” Sarge said with a nod, “just ‘cause you cut that ‘hog in half.”

“Three points for a Warthog?” Tucker asked, turning to him.

“You guys can argue about it later,” Fox said, a grin in her voice. “Just because we’ve been doing a good job taking care of these pirates, doesn’t mean this fight is over yet.”

Tucker remembered the group that Wash and Carolina had gone after, and felt his stomach clench in worry. That worry only wound tighter when he heard shouting from the other side of the valley, and looked over to see Matthews and Grif darting for cover under fire from a group of pirates.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go babysit,” Fox said, turning on her heel and starting in their direction.

Tucker watched her go, but looked away suddenly when he heard Hodges’ voice over comms. “Captain Tucker! We tried- We couldn’t hold them off! McDevitt is hurt, and I- Oh-”

“Hodges? What’s wrong?” Tucker asked, turning away from Sarge and the others.

“The _Pelicans!_ A group of four pirates came back and shot McDevitt. And I had to take cover and I didn’t have a chance to set the charges! I’m sorry!”

“Wait, they _have_ the Pelicans?!”  
“Yessir! That’s what I’ve been trying to _say!_ ”

Tucker looked back at the others, who by listening had figured out that something was wrong. “Shit.”

 

* * *

 

The second she stepped out of headquarters, Kimball found herself flanked by Bitters and a Federation soldier she recognized as Lawrence. Across the field, she could see Simmons, Caboose, and their men holding the north side, but clearly getting pushed back.

“You two, on me,” she ordered the two soldiers.

Together, the three of them picked their way through the fight, making it halfway across the field and taking cover behind one of the large rock formations in the middle of it when fire in their direction got too heavy.

“Fucking hell, there’s a lot of them,” Bitters hissed.  

Kimball leaned out to try to get a visual of the pirates on the other side, but drew back quickly with a hiss when a bullet nicked the rock just above her head. She took a deep breath and leaned out again, this time pinpointing the pirate who had fired at her. She pulled back when he raised his gun and grit her teeth under her helmet as bullets ricocheted off of the stone. Then she readied her gun, leaned out again, and fired in his direction. The pirate went down will a yell, blood spurting from his neck. A sudden explosion to her left drew her attention, and she saw Sarge, Tucker, Caboose, Donut, Simmons, and Fox near the wreckage of a Warthog that had been...cut in half. Judging by the way everyone was looking at Fox, it was her doing.

Kimball motioned to her men to follow her as they moved forward towards them, her eyes watching Fox as she ran off back across the field, using her shield to protect her from the pirate’s gunfire.

She reached the group of Reds and Blues just in time to catch the end of their conversation about the Pelican.

“General Kimball!” Simmons exclaimed when he saw her.

“Listen to me, the pirates have taken out our long-range communications, so we can’t broadcast updates to everyone,” Kimball explained quickly, skipping all formality. “You, me, Bitters, and Lawrence are going to locate the jammer and take it out, understand?”

Simmons and the others all exchanged a look. “I-- Y-yes ma’am!”

“Another thing; Locus is out here with us. I know what you’re thinking, but I _did_ authorize it. So do not shoot him, am I clear?”

“Is that a good idea?” Tucker asked.

“Don’t you worry yerself none, Blue. If he tries anything, us Red’s’ll just give him a good old what-for!” Sarge exclaimed.

“Our odds only increase with the more allies we have,” Kimball replied quickly. “Fox and I will be keeping an eye on him. The rest of you keep sharp, and try to take out those Pelicans when they get here,” Kimball said. “Good luck, boys.” Then she turned and headed back the way they’d come, Bitters, Lawrence, and Simmons on her tail.

When they got closer to headquarters, she turned to Simmons and asked, “do you have an idea of what sort of transmitter they would be using to jam us? It’s not coming from their ship.”

“They’d need to stick it somewhere that it would affect all of us,” Simmons replied.

“Such as?”

“Somewhere we wouldn’t look, probably.”

Kimball blinked, then looked out from behind cover, just in time to catch a pirate as he came around the corner. She delivered a hard blow to his stomach, then slammed the butt of her gun against the side of his head, sprawling him out. Then she dragged him behind cover and knelt down with her knee in his stomach and her gun under his chin. “The transmitter jamming our radios. Where is it?”

“Jesus...f-fuck. I don’t know what you’re talking about!” the pirate groaned.

“Wrong answer,” Kimball growled, putting her finger on the trigger to apply some more pressure.

“And why would I tell you anything?”

“Is this really worth losing your life over?” Kimball asked.

The pirate thought for a moment, then sighed and said, “look, a couple of guys went and planted it above your fucking headquarters on the cliff, okay?”

“Thank you,” Kimball said, and put him out with a hard blow to the forehead with the stock of her gun. Then she stood and looked back at Simmons, Lawrence, and Bitters. “Look sharp, men. He said the top of headquarters, so that’s where we’re heading.”

 

* * *

 

By now, Grey and Jensen had noticed the two pirates. And the two pirates had noticed that Grey and Jensen had noticed them. But none of the four had noticed Locus, who was slowly making his way towards them under active camouflage.

He assessed the situation, realizing with mild frustration that Jensen had lost too much blood to be of use to anyone in a fight. Not that her aim had been particularly good to begin with, if memory served him correctly. Grey wasn’t a fighter, and she was preoccupied with trying to mend Jensen’s leg enough to get her back on her feet. Of the two pirates, there was one that Locus recognized, a tall, rough-looking fellow with a directed beam rifle in his hands that he had allegedly gotten from an alien he’d killed. Locus couldn’t remember his name; not that it really mattered. The other pirate was lankier and had a carbine, and seemed _very_ excited for what he and his companion were about to attempt.

 _Attempt_ being the key word. Locus never planned on letting them succeed. So when the lankier one leapt on top of the large rock Grey and Jensen were using for cover, with a victorious exclamation of “hello _ladies!_ ” Locus shot him in the neck and, having given up his cover, dropped his camo.

The pirate collapsed to the ground, clawing at his throat and choking, blood pooling around his head. And both Jensen and Grey froze when they saw who had saved them.

Locus looked away from all three of them towards the other pirate, who had stopped and lowered his gun when he saw his former leader.

He looked at the now dead body of his companion, then back at Locus, seeming to put the two and two together. “Well, well, well,” he chuckled, “looks like I’m in the presence of a ghost. Hello, _boss._ ”

“Walk away,” Locus growled, deciding that if the pirate wanted to talk, he may as well use it to his advantage.

“Oh ho-ho! I don’t think so. I’ve got a new boss, and he pays _way_ better than you and Felix ever did,” the pirate snickered.

“I won’t ask you again,” Locus said, raising his gun.

“You don’t have to,” the pirate replied, snapping his gun up and firing past Locus’ head. The blast hit the cliff face and sent several large chunks of loose rock cascading down that Locus was forced to dodge. When he turned to fire at the pirate, he had vanished.

It was right then that Locus remembered the pirate was one of those who had been given an active camouflage unit. _Outstanding,_ he thought, and ducked behind cover when another series of blasts struck uncomfortably close to him.

“It’s a little soon for you to have served your sentence,” came Grey’s voice from behind him.

Locus looked over at her, then ducked again when a series of blasts hit the rock just above his head. Active camouflage was impossible to see from far away. A melee weapon was his best bet in this scenario. But he couldn't leave Grey and Jensen defenseless. “Can you fire a gun?” he asked without looking over at her.

“I’m the smartest person on the planet! What do you think?” Grey replied in a singsong voice.

Locus looked over at her, irritated, then slid his machine gun over to her. “Point and shoot,” he said, activating his sword. “Stay here.” Then he leapt over their cover, barely dodging another series of blasts when he landed, and taking note of where it had come from. There was a sound like air being pushed out of a vent directly ahead followed by cursing. Locus realized that the weapon must have overheated, and took his chance, slashing at the air in front of him, making out the edge of the camo in the corner of his eye.

There was a yell, and the pirate dropped his camo completely, staggering back. One hand held the rifle limply, and the other was clamped across the wound Locus had made in the opposite shoulder. The pirate hissed between his teeth and lunged unexpectedly, using the currently useless gun as a makeshift melee weapon as he swung it at Locus, who stepped out of the way and delivered a hard kick into the man’s injured shoulder. The pirate howled and dropped the rifle, then whirled with a knife in his hand, forcing Locus back. He then grabbed the rifle off the ground and started firing. Locus threw himself out of the way, activating his camo, but knew that it wouldn’t do much to conceal him with the amount of dust that had been kicked up.

He needed to get the pirate away from Grey and Jensen. Thinking fast, he ducked around behind the pirate and dropped his camo. Like he had expected, the pirate noticed and turned and started firing at him. Locus dodged behind cover, and waited for the pirate to come after him. When the sound of footsteps was right around the corner, Locus leapt out and slashed at the pirate with his sword. But the pirate had been ready for him and fired his gun off right as he did so, and Locus had the misfortune of being nicked in the shoulder by one of the blasts. He rolled out of the way, angry at himself for not being more careful, and as the pirate turned to face him, he lunged. The pirate grabbed his wrist before he could strike, so Locus delivered a hard elbow jab to the man’s side instead with the other arm, folding the pirate in half and forcing him to let go. Locus moved in to run him through, but wound up seeing stars when the pirate straightened up forcefully and headbutted him in the chin, aggravating what was surely a concussion leftover from the crash, and sending him stumbling back.

Locus managed to find footing quickly, but it didn’t matter, as the pirate charged forward and struck him hard in the abdomen with his rifle. Under any other circumstance, the blow would have been nothing but a mild irritation. But Locus’ injuries were still fresh, and the wound in his side was still tender, and when struck with the rifle it send an explosion of pain through him, and for a moment he couldn’t tell if he’d been shot or not and he didn’t even realize he’d hit the ground until the pirate was standing over him.

Locus’ hand tightened to grip the sword, but grasped hollow air instead and when he glanced over he realized that it had been knocked out of his reach. And he heard the sound of the rifle being charged and without thinking swung a leg out at the pirate’s ankle and sent him toppling to the ground. But the pirate didn’t stay down long, rolling to the side and coming up onto one knee with the sword in his hand. And Locus couldn’t help but be angry at himself for his own lack of foresight.

“Shouldn’t have brought a knife to a gunfight, buddy,” the pirate chortled, rising to his feet.

Locus struggled to do the same, looking around for something he could use as a weapon as he did so. The sniper rifle would be stupid to use at close range with the kick that it gave. He’d never fire it straight, especially with his side smarting like it was. He could try to get the gun that Jensen had, but that would only lead the pirate dangerously close to her and Grey. And as the pirate raised his rifle again to fire, Locus looked over, preparing to dodge, and noticed something behind him.

A flagpole with a New Republic banner waving from it, poking up out of the ground several feet away.

With no other options in store, Locus went for it, charging the pirate, barely ducking in time to avoid a series of blasts fired at his head. The pirate stumbled back when he missed and brought his rifle up as a sort of shield as Locus reached him. He drove a knee up, catching the bottom of the rifle and sending it into the pirate’s chin, then knocked the weapon out of his hands while his opponent stumbled back. He planted a hard kick into the pirate’s chest, flooring him, then dove for the flagpole.

It was buried in the ground far better than he had expected, and he struggled a bit to pull it out, watching the pirate scramble across the ground for his gun. Locus gave the pole one last hard tug, ripping it out of the ground, and turned right as the pirate rose with his rifle in his hand.

He never got the chance to fire it.

With a wet gurgle, the pirate dropped the weapon, and it clattered to the ground, blood dripping onto it. The pirate stared down at the pole that had been driven into his middle, hands grasping at the blood-slicked metal.

Locus changed his grip on the flagpole and stepped forward, causing the pirate’s weakened knees to give out and collapsing him backwards. He writhed as Locus drove the flagpole deeper, completely impaling him, and pinning him to the ground. The pirate let out one final choking gasp, and went still.

Locus stood over him for a moment, breathing hard and still gripping the flagpole, though more for support to keep him upright than anything else. He shouldn’t already be this tired; this had barely been a fight. Frustrated, Locus let go of the pole and forced himself to straighten up. He located where his sword had fallen and picked it up, holstering it at his side. He looked back at the pirate for a moment, trying to even his breathing, and remembered Jensen and Doctor Grey. He turned back towards where they had been, and saw Grey peeking out from behind the rocks at him, her body language unreadable.

 _Go. Get your gun back and keep moving. If you keep moving, you can forget the pain._ So Locus moved, heading back towards the two, struggling to keep his feet from dragging. When he reached Grey and Jensen, he stopped at a distance, knowing full well that if he got too close the situation could go sideways.

“Are either of you hurt?” he asked after a moment, hating how his pain crept into his voice.

Grey and Jensen watched him warily for a moment, saying nothing. Then Grey rose slowly out of her crouch, picking up the gun he had given her as she did so, and stepped towards him. “We’re both doing way better than you are,” she said, holding the gun in her arms like she wasn’t sure what to do with it.

Locus watched her carefully, and she did the same to him, her grip on the gun not loosening. And suddenly the sounds of the fight around him came back to him as the ringing in his ears fell away, and he remembered where he was, and that he needed that gun if he was going to continue the job he had been sent to do. And Grey seemed to realize it too, because with a dramatic sigh, she held the weapon out to him. “ _Here_ ,” she said. “Just don’t go making a mess.”

Locus stared at the gun for a moment, then slowly reached out and took it from her. He checked the weapon, noting that no rounds had been fired from it, and looked back at Grey, feeling like he should say something, but not knowing what.

“Well? I don’t know _why_ Kimball let you out here, but if it’s to help with this shitshow, you better get going!” Grey exclaimed, making a shooing motion with her hands at him.

Locus looked back towards where most of the fighting was happening, and froze when he heard what sounded like an approaching aircraft in the distance. That wasn’t good.

“Alright, look, here.” Locus looked back at Grey when she spoke again, and was startled when a tube of biofoam was shoved in his face. “As much as I would _love_ to have to cut you open for what you did,” Grey began in a sickly sweet voice, “you’re no use to _anyone_ if you’re stumbling around with a gash in your side. So fix yourself up and get out of here.”

Locus took the tube of biofoam from her, glancing at it and then looking back at Grey with a nod. He then turned as the roar of an aircraft engine drew closer and watched as two Pelicans appeared above the treeline. With a sigh, he jammed the needle of the biofoam tube into his smarting side, hissing through his teeth at the initial wave of pain accompanying it, eyes never leaving the Pelicans as they began circling the valley.

The fight wasn’t over yet. He still had work to do.

 

* * *

 

Tucker found Palomo again right as the Pelicans started circling. The young lieutenant had been assisting one of Grey’s medics with dragging a fellow soldier out of harm’s way, glancing up anxiously as he did so.

“Captain Tucker!” he cried when Tucker got close. “Fuck, what do we do?!”

“I don’t know!” Tucker admitted, shooing both him and the medic away and dragging the soldier the last few feet behind cover by himself. “I haven’t been able to get a hold of Wash or Carolina. I just sent an update about the Pelicans to Kimball, but she hasn’t gotten back to me yet.” Tucker stepped back at let the medic in to help the soldier, then hefted his gun again and turned back to Palomo.

“Are comms down?”

“Yeah. Kimball, Simmons, Bitters, and Lawrence are working on them,” Tucker said, ducking behind cover as a Warthog of pirates drove past and fired their machine gun near where he had been standing. When they passed, he rose and fired several rounds at them, hitting the gunner and sending him toppling out of the vehicle. He watched as the Warthog lost control suddenly and rolled onto its side, spilling its two remaining passengers onto the ground. One of them jerked suddenly like they had been shot, and went still. The other jumped up and stumbled back, hands fumbling for his gun. Tucker flinched as there was a sudden arc of turquoise light that took off the pirate’s head. He looked for Fox, spotting her on the other end of the field with her disc...in her hand?

Oh.

Tucker looked back towards where the Warthog had crashed and watched with a sickening feeling as an all-too-familiar mercenary materialized out of nowhere.

“Fuck, is that _Locus?!_ ” Palomo yelped.

“Yep,” Tucker said grimly

“What the fuck is he doing here?”

“Helping. Apparently,” Tucker replied, and started to contact Kimball again when one of the Pelicans started shooting. He grabbed Palomo and yanked him down behind cover as bullets tore past them on one side, kicking up a line of dust. “Jesus _fuck!_ ”

Tucker watched as the Pelican circled around, Kimball’s men scrambling and shouting to each other below. The second Pelican dove low, and he watched with a sinking stomach as the machine gun under its nose began rotating.

It never had the chance to fire.

A familiar form in aquamarine armor leapt out of the trees and off the cliff suddenly, landing on top of the Pelican, grav-boots active. Tucker watched as Carolina pulled out her pistols and fired them through the cockpit window of the dropship, killing the pilot and sending the craft whirling out of control. She leapt off of the doomed Pelican and hit the ground in a roll, coming up onto one knee and watching as the dropship smashed into the side of the cliff and collapsed down into the trees below.

Not a minute later, Wash appeared, with Hodges slung over one shoulder. Tucker watched with relief as he dropped the soldier off into the care of a nearby medic and started towards Carolina.

“Let’s finish these fuckers off,” Tucker said with a grin, cocking his gun.

“With pleasure!” Palomo said, and followed him as he ran out from behind cover, both firing at pirates as they moved, heading for one of the large stone structures in the middle of the small valley.

They both slid behind it, and Tucker looked up as the last Pelican circled overhead, following it with his eyes as it dove low and its machine gun started spinning. He watched as it kicked up a line of dirt on the other side of his and Palomo’s cover, leaning back so he could keep track of it, then looked over when he heard a cry and saw a fellow soldier topple to the ground with blood spurting onto his thigh guard. And he felt his heart sink as he saw Wash leap out from cover and start dragging them to safety, firing at the pirates who had shot the soldier with one hand, and pulling with the other - right as the Pelican rounded the corner.

“Wash!” Tucker shouted, putting a hand on Palomo’s shoulder to tell him to stay put as he rose and began running towards him, not thinking of the consequences.

Wash looked up and noticed the Pelican, and saw the machine gun start to spin, and he dropped his gun and gave the soldier a good hard yank back, nearly throwing them away from him. But the movement put him off balance, and he stumbled backwards, and the machine gun fired, and Tucker slipped, landing on his side and could only look back in horror at the wall of dust kicked up, cutting Wash off from view.

And a movement to his right drew his attention, and he watched as one of the pirates who Wash had been shooting at before came out from cover and slipped into the dust. And Tucker raised his gun to fire at him, but another pirate appeared from where the first one had come, and he had a grenade in his hand. And Tucker scrambled to his feet and threw himself away when it landed near him, covering the back of his neck and feeling the heat and shrapnel hit him with force. And when he uncurled, he saw Wash struggling to sit up, red mixing with the yellow markings on his armor, and the pirate standing over him.

 _Shit, shit,_ ** _shit!_** Where was Carolina? Where was Sarge? Or Caboose? Or _anyone?_ He was too far away. He was too far away and he knew it, but still Tucker tried to get his feet under him, and grab his gun, and turn and try to reach Wash. But when he tried to stand, his knee gave out, and he fell to the ground screaming curses. And he looked up, and the pirate raised his gun, and Tucker cried out Wash’s name one more time, trying to get him to _move,_ to do _something._

And the pirate froze. And Tucker stared at the plasma blade protruding from the man’s chest, and watched as his gun clattered uselessly to his feet, and listened as the man choked on blood as the blade was driven up, creating a molten gash through the middle of him. And as the blade was yanked out, its wielder revealed himself, appearing like an apparition out of the still settling dust.

And _now_ Tucker found his feet, and raised his gun, prepared to put a bullet through Locus’ head at the slightest movement. But then he did something that Tucker never would have expected; he holstered his sword, and held his hand out to Wash. Wash hesitated, clearly shellshocked, but then hesitantly and cautiously accepted it, and Locus pulled him to his feet. And when Wash stumbled slightly, he put a hand out to steady him, and Tucker could hear him ask if he was hurt, and he felt his stomach clench with unease. And the tension didn’t leave him even when Locus gave Wash a nod and turned and walked away, heading towards where Fox was holding her own against a group of pirates who had finally gained enough sense to decide that she was a priority threat.

Tucker never took his eyes off of Locus as he hurried as fast as his injuries would allow over to Wash, who had just noticed that the soldier he had helped had gotten a medic’s attention. “Are you okay?” he asked, when he finally reached him.

Wash looked over at him, and didn’t respond right away, and Tucker had the sense that he was still trying to process what had just happened. “Kimball never said anything about him being out here with us,” he said instead of answering the question.

“Comms are down, she couldn’t. But when I saw her, she said he was on our side,” Tucker replied, leading him behind cover.

Wash nodded. “Smart choice. Better our odds. I hope someone’s keeping an eye on him.”

“She said her and Fox were,” Tucker said.

“Good.” Wash fell silent for a moment, and Tucker looked away, and pinpointed the pirate who had thrown a grenade at him earlier. Palomo must have shot him, because he was on the ground writhing in pain, and the former was nowhere to be found. He watched as the Pelican circled back, and reloaded his gun. He could see Carolina preoccupied with helping Grif with some pirates. Sarge was back-to-back with Caboose, and they were raising hell with Freckles keeping track of his wielder's kills. Matthews and Andersmith were with Donut and Lopez, and the four of them were pushing the pirates back with suppressive fire. He spotted Palomo carrying Jensen on his shoulders with Grey tailing him across the field. And he was with Wash, who just a minute ago had almost been torn apart by a machine gun.

Tucker hissed as the dropship’s fire tore into one of Kimball’s soldiers who hadn’t reached cover fast enough, red spurting against white armor as they collapsed.

Someone was going to need to do something about that Pelican.

 

* * *

 

“Three targets. One in front of the transmitter, two by the edge of the cliff,” Kimball hissed to her men.

“What do we do?” Simmons asked.

“Lawrence, you take the one in front of the transmitter. Bitters, you and I are going for the ones on the cliff. Simmons, the second Lawrence takes out his target, you get in there and get to work. The longer we take with this, the more trouble we’ll be in if the pirates pull anything else out of their sleeve,” Kimball replied, eyes never leaving their targets.

“Copy that,” Lawrence said, and out of the corner of her eye, Kimball saw him and Simmons move away from them.

“They’re really close to the edge of that cliff,” Bitters said, sounding a little uneasy.

“We’ll be okay. Just stay focused,” Kimball replied, and started creeping forward. They needed to be fast if they didn’t want to be seen, as their armor didn’t exactly blend in well with their surroundings.

A sudden cry behind her as Lawrence took out his target made her freeze, and her stomach sank when the two pirates she and Bitters were approaching turned.

 _“Shit!”_ one of them exclaimed, and they both open fired.

Kimball threw herself back behind the transmitter, and Bitters did the same, scrambling for cover. Kimball hissed between her teeth and waited for the firing to stop before she leaned out and took several shots at one of the pirates. She caught him in the leg, and he went down, and she ducked back into cover. “Bitters, I have one immobilized. You take that one out, and I’ll handle the other one.”

“Yes ma’am!”

She traded places with him, skirting around Simmons who was doing exactly what she had asked him to do, and waited for the firing to stop. She listened to the footsteps of the pirate who was still able to walk get closer, and when they stopped just behind the transmitter, she coiled herself up and sprung over it, slamming the heel of her foot into the pirate’s visor. He stumbled backwards, firing blindly, and she ducked under the bullet spray and went for his legs, tackling him to the ground. She knocked his gun out of his hand, but barely blocked the knife he slashed at her with in the other. The ambush caught her off guard, and suddenly she found herself pinned to the ground, no gun in her hands, and a knife being driven down towards her. She caught the pirate’s wrists before the blade went into her throat, and braced her shoulders against the ground to try to push him back.

“Hey, aren’t  you the leader of this operation?” the pirate asked between grunts of effort as he tried to force the knife down. “Shouldn’t you be painting your nails in your ivory tower?”

Kimball let go of his wrist with one hand and grabbed her pistol with it, pressing it against the pirate’s stomach. “I’m not your fucking employer,” she snarled, and emptied the clip in him.

With a groan, she pushed the pirate off, looking over to see Bitters standing over his target, blood on his shoulder guard that looked to be his. “Clear,” she said, panting, then pulled herself to her feet, making her way over to where Simmons was working. Lawrence had joined him, and was crouching by his side with his gun ready, scanning the jungle for enemies.

When he noticed Kimball approach, he quickly said, “sorry ma’am! I didn’t expect him to yell like that!”

Kimball stopped beside him. “No need to apologize, soldier. You did good. That wasn’t your fault.”

Lawrence gave her a grateful nod, then went back to scanning the trees.

Kimball looked over at Simmons, who was hard at work. “How close are we?” she asked.

“Thirty seconds,” he replied.

Kimball looked away, back down towards the fight, still breathing hard. Thirty seconds was a damn long time.

 

* * *

 

 

“I’ll take the ones on the left, you take the ones on the right?” Fox suggested. She was back-to-back with Locus in the middle of a ring of ten or so pirates. Apparently Control had decided that they were a big enough threat to focus on.

Locus glanced back at her, a little frustrated that she had gotten them into this situation in the first place, but nodded anyways. At this distance, active camouflage would be too easy to spot. And he didn’t know how well that shield of Fox’s would work at close range.

“Just go with the flow,” Fox said calmly. And out of the corner of his eye, he saw her move. Her shield sliced through two of the pirates like paper and arced around in front of Locus, who in a mixture of confusion and amazement noted that some sort of hard light was coming off of it and expanding it significantly. As it spun past, it deflected the pirates’ bullets, and Locus took the chance to shoot two of them in the head with his machine gun, then took the arm off of another with his sword. Fox slid around his side, and Locus moved with her, keeping his back to her as she lopped the legs off of another pirate, and charged another, while throwing her shield back in his direction. Locus ducked instinctively as a pirate fired at him, despite the bullets ricocheting off of the shield. He then turned as Fox shouted his name, just in time to catch a grenade she tossed to him. He pulled the pin, and hurled it at the pirates in front of him, catching three of them with the blast. And he whirled around towards the remaining two pirates, finding himself shoulder-to-shoulder with Fox as he put a bullet through the one on the right’s head, and she sliced through the one on the left.

“Fuck yeah!” she shouted, punching the air. But then whirled and flung her shield up over both her and Locus’ head, just in time to deflect the machine gun fire of the Pelican as it tore past.

Locus looked up as it flew over them, realizing he had dropped into a crouch, and rose to his feet. He watched the Pelican, and Fox did too, appearing to analyze it as it turned and started back towards them.

“How’s your pain level?” she asked without looking at him.

Locus stared at her. “It’s fine.”

“Great,” she replied, “because I’m gonna need a boost.

 

* * *

 

Tucker watched the Pelican fire on Fox and Locus to no avail, and looked on in curiosity as Fox put some distance between her and Locus, while the latter crouched on the ground. Fox charged, and Tucker watched as Locus boosted her into the air as the Pelican flew overhead, and she sailed up and launched her shield at the back of the ship.

The Pelican made a sputtering sound, and it teetered in the air, flames spurting out of its engines. Tucker watched as the soldiers in its path scattered; the ship hitting the ground with a metallic groan and tumbling several kilometers. Fox landed with her back too it, and brushed herself off, and didn’t even look back when the ship exploded violently behind her, and instead gazed up at Locus with her hands on her hips. Her shield arced back to her, and she caught it, and did something to deactivate the hard light barrier around it, retracting it back into its spherical form and attaching it to her hip.

This was apparently the last straw for the remaining pirates, as they called for a retreat immediately after, and slunk back into the jungle, their numbers severely depleted. Kimball’s soldiers cheered and shouted insults at the pirates as they fled, and Sarge fired off a round of bullets into the air while yelling victoriously.

Tucker joined in, but couldn’t help but feel a little lackluster about all of it. They still had another problem to deal with. Tucker looked back at Locus, and was about to start towards him when his comm squealed loudly. Apparently he wasn’t the only one to experience it, because a collective groan of pain rose up from the rest of the soldiers, many of whom grabbed at their audio filters.

“I FIXED IT!” Came a joyous shout over the radio.

“Simmons?” Tucker heard Wash exclaim.

“Oh, hey Wash. Uh. Hi everybody. Th-this is Captain Simmons. It seems like the pirates must have used some sort of radio jammer that they planted right over headquarters. B-but my team and I took care of it! So we should be good to go!”

“Communications back online,” came the response from the command center. “All private channels are now open. Please follow procedure and use them accordingly.”

Tucker let out a sigh of relief and looked around, many of the others seemed to feel just as glad as he did. He watched them for a moment, then turned away when he heard Kimball’s voice over his comm. “This is an open channel to Blue Team. Two of the Pelicans that were sent in still haven’t been recovered. We know their location. Agent Washington, I want you to take your men and secure them.”

“Copy.” Tucker looked over when he heard Wash reply, and frowned under his helmet.

“Dude, that arm of yours needs to be checked out.”

“It’s _fine_ , Tucker. I’ll have it looked at later.”

Tucker let out a frustrated sigh and shook his head, listening as the command center broadcasted orders over an open channel. He looked away, and stiffened as Fox walked past with Locus in tow. Tucker’s eyes followed the latter, and he noted how Locus glanced at him and Wash as he walked past, an ugly feeling of unease boiling in his stomach. Then Locus looked away, and Tucker watched him follow Fox back into headquarters.

“Tucker.”

Tucker jumped when he felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked over to see Wash.

“It’s okay,” Wash said. Then, “let’s go. We have work to do.” He turned and started towards where Caboose and Carolina had already gathered.

Tucker watched him go, stealing one look back towards headquarters, his head filled with tangled thoughts, then he turned and jogged after Wash.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HELLO LONGEST CHAPTER I’VE WRITTEN SO FAR.  
> Believe it or not, but it was supposed to be longer. I killed so many scenes. So many. There’s blood on my hands, boys. I’m a wanted man. I have to take to the hills and live out of the rusted boxcar of a train, tending to my shotgun as I watch the world whip by in the orange glow of sundown, waiting for the day the law catches up to me.
> 
> I made up a bunch of names for Tucker's teammates beCAUSE NO ONE HAS FUCKING NAMES ON CHORUS BC EVERYONE UNIMPORTANT (except Doyle. He was VERY important) DIES.
> 
> *Coughs*
> 
> Frisbee. Murder.  
> Gonna remind everyone here that Fox used to be a TERRIBLE Okami OC who got her own divine disk for literally no reason other than that I was twelve and thought it was cool. Don’t look at me.
> 
> “Listen Kimball it’s fine. If he dies no one will care. BETTER HIM THAN YOUR MEN AMIRITE?”  
> I mean she does have kind of a point but still. 
> 
> Locus is just...going with the flow and trying not piss anyone else off lol.  
> Meanwhile, Kimball is busy being a total badass and fucking obliterating pirates.
> 
> It feels like ages since I wrote from Tucker’s POV. Probs bc I’ve been writing through Kimball for like...three chapters now. I love him so much.
> 
> Listen okay the ability to impale someone with a flagpole in Halo 5 makes me so happy and I just had to do it, okay?  
> Also that pirate’s name is Sampson. Just in case anyone wanted to know. And he’s basically that one Stormtrooper from Star Wars 7 with the stun baton. At least he tried. 
> 
> I didn't mean to consolidate all of the images at the end of the chapter. It just happened like that, I swear. I might go back and add another one in of Tucker looking awesome or something. Just to even it out. But for now I'm posting it.


	12. Trust

“Well  _ that _ was a party!” Fox exclaimed as she led Locus through the halls of the New Republic headquarters in the direction of Kimball’s office. She had wanted to speak to both of them. It struck her as a little odd that the General hadn’t immediately sent a troop of soldiers to re-arrest Locus, all things considered. Though, after the fight they’d just had, it was understandable that she would want to focus the most manpower on helping her own men out. Which was probably why she’d ordered a single, scared-looking soldier to accompany them instead of a platoon. 

“You don’t talk much, do you, kid?” Fox asked, looking back over her shoulder at the soldier, who only tightened his grip on his gun. It was almost funny to see that he felt threatened, considering both her and Locus had their weapons taken from them the minute they stepped into headquarters.

“J-Just keep walking.”

“I’m walking and talking,” Fox replied, turning her head away. “You got a name?”

“W-what’s it to you?”

Fox shrugged. “Just asking. Trying to get to know people around here, y’know?” 

The soldier was silent, and Fox listened to the sound of their footsteps echo through the empty hall. “Louise,” he said after some time.

“Nice to meet you!” Fox said, allowing a grin to creep into her voice, trying to keep the mood light. She glanced back at the soldier, who seemed to be eyeing Locus warily. “Oh, don’t mind him. He’s harmless now.”

“I don’t think you know what you’re talking about,” Louise said in a tone that suggested he wasn’t trying to offend her.

“Honey, I’m the scariest thing in this hallway. Believe me,”  Fox said, stopping short of the door to Kimball’s office. “Should I knock?”

“She  _ knows _ we’re coming,” Locus growled, clearly not taking the comment about being harmless in stride.

“Alright, sour-puss, no need for a hissy fit,” Fox huffed, and walked up to the doors, stepping through when their motion sensors detected her and slid open. 

Kimball was waiting for them with two other soldiers at her side. All three of them had guns, but Kimball’s was holstered at her side in a display of contextually-aware civility. Or as much as she deemed necessary in the current situation, that is. Fox noted this as she stepped around the holo-table and came to a stop in front of the general, not looking over when Locus joined her at her side.

When no one spoke up for a moment, Fox finally let her patience slip and asked, “sooooo? How’d we do?”

Kimball looked over at her, and Fox noted how she regarded her in silence for a moment before speaking. “I believe I owe you an apology.”

Fox blinked. “What?”

“I shouldn’t have doubted you,” Kimball continued.

_ Oh! _ Fox put her hands up reassuringly. “No, hey, you don’t need to be sorry for that! You  _ did _ just meet me. Kinda. So I can’t expect you to trust me yet.”

For a moment, Fox could have sworn that Kimball looked relieved. But then her business-like composure returned, and she said, “today was a shaky test run, but I think the results that we got were worth noting.” Kimball looked over at Locus when she finished, regarding him for a moment before continuing. “Fox asked me to pair you with her, and considering how the two of you worked together today, I think it’s fair to say that it was a good call.  _ However _ , this does  _ not _ change things for you.”

Fox heard Locus let out a long sigh and say, “understood.”

“That being said,” Kimball added, “there are still a number of pirates that retreated. We’re unsure of whether or not they will be returning, but we’re preparing ourselves for another attack regardless. Should that happen, the two of you will be paired together again, so it might be worth your time to get comfortable with one another.” She looked over at Fox. “You and I will discuss the specifics of this at a later time, once we make sure headquarters are secure.”

“Copy that,” Fox replied, satisfied with the direction this conversation was going. 

“For now, you will be treated for any injuries you’ve sustained, and returned to your cell,” Kimball said, looking over at Locus. 

He simply nodded. 

Fox watched as the two soldiers on either side of Kimball stepped forward to escort Locus out. She waited until they had exited the room to ask, “what did you have in mind when you said you might pair us together?”

Kimball seemed startled by the question, as her focus had been turned towards her office doors, rather than Fox. “I--” She cleared her throat and quickly regained her composure. “I was going to work on a plan for the two of you over the next few days.”

“Huh,” Fox said. “Well, if you don’t mind the boldness, I think giving him a bit more slack on his leash would help me work with him.”

If Kimball was opposed to the idea, she didn’t show it. “Give me an example.”

“Maybe a few hours a day to work with him?” Fox suggested. “I mean, if we’re going to be paired up, we might as well get to know one another better. We could run through training exercises or something. I don’t know.”

Kimball tilted her head towards the floor, appearing deep in thought. Then she looked back towards Fox and said, “I’m going to discuss this with Agents Washington and Carolina later, and I’ll get back to you.” She fell silent and stared at Fox for a moment, then added, “in the meantime, I would like you to help out here where you can.”

Fox nodded, understanding that the conversation wasn’t going to get much further than that. “You mentioned earlier before the fight that I should help Doctor Grey.”

“Yes,” Kimball said with a nod, looking slightly relieved that Fox hadn’t pursued the topic of being paired with Locus any further. “In fact, she could probably still use your help.”

“Well, then I know where I’ll be hanging out for the next few hours,” Fox replied, smiling under her helmet. “You got anything else for me, or are we done?”

“You’re dismissed,” Kimball replied with a small sigh.

Fox nodded and headed for the door, pausing before she reached it, and looking back. “Thank you for trusting me,” she said, then stepped into the hallway.

 

* * *

 

Only one of the Pelicans had been captured successfully. The other, filled with those who hadn’t fallen to Blue Team’s surprise attack, had disappeared on the horizon.

Tucker had wanted to go after them, but orders from the command center had called them back to headquarters. He’d sat in the back of the commandeered dropship with a bitter expression on his face under his helmet, and when they’d landed, he’d yanked his helmet off and walked away without a word. 

As he made his way across the tarmac to the hangar, he refused the urge to look back, even when he heard someone running after him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw yellow and gray, and couldn’t help but feel his frustration boil hotter. He waited for Wash to say something, and when he didn’t, he spoke instead. “Today was a  _ fucking  _ shitshow.”

“I know,” Wash said. And he was using  _ that _ voice again. And Tucker felt himself scowl. 

He ground his teeth as they stepped into the hangar, walking past the few aircrafts they had left. Even with the alien weapons they had acquired, their resources were still unreasonably low. And to top it off, they’d just lost a metric fuck-ton of men, Kimball had gotten the idea to set Locus  _ loose _ , and his  _ team- _ Tucker heard himself make an angry sound, and he turned and exited the hangar into headquarters. 

“It’s all so fucking  _ stupid! _ ” he exclaimed, not caring how loud he got.

“Tucker-”

“Half of my men are probably  _ dead _ , Wash,” Tucker snarled, rounding on his teammate. 

“They recovered McDevitt. He’s got a few broken bones and was shot in the shoulder, but he’s alive.”

And Tucker felt a good portion of the hot air drain from him.  _ Oh, _ he thought. Well it was good news, at least. But he still couldn’t bring himself to feel more than a little relieved. “Okay, so that’s  _ one _ problem, Wash. We still have like,  _ twenty _ more.” He turned and began walking again, feeling a little bad about his tone, but persisting with the conversation anyways. “I mean, what the  _ fuck _ was that out there? That thing with Fox?  _ Locus? _ The ship those pirates were on disappeared an hour ago. And now we’ve got a Pelican to worry about--”

“Tucker, I  _ know. _ ” And something in his tone made Tucker look over at him. “I know,” Wash repeated with a sigh. “Believe me, I feel it too.”

And Tucker found himself looking into his friend’s visor, and wondered if the expression it was reflecting back at him was the same as the one on Wash’s own face. “We were supposed to be  _ done _ with all of this,” he said, looking away, down at the floor. 

“It’s never that easy,” Wash said, a hint of bitter irony in his voice.

“It fucking sucks,” Tucker huffed, holding his helmet in front of him and staring down at it. There was dried pirate blood stuck in the corner of his visor. Gross. 

“Look, why don’t you go down to the medbay and see Hodges and McDevitt? Palomo is probably down there too. Seeing that they’re okay might make you feel a little better,” Wash suggested.

Tucker sighed. “Are you just trying to get rid of me?”

“I’ve been trying for years, and it hasn’t worked yet,” Wash joked, giving him a nudge with his elbow. “But seriously, you should go see them. I mean it when I say it’ll help.”

Tucker pursed his lips and nodded. “Yeah, okay. I’ll uh...I’ll catch you later?”

Wash shrugged. “In a bit, probably,” he said, and turned into a branching hallway, walking away and leaving Tucker standing by himself for a moment.

Tucker looked down at he helmet in his hands, then sucked in a deep breath and tucked it under his arm, heading for the med bay.

 

* * *

 

There were plenty of people Tucker had been expecting to possibly run into on the walk to the medbay; Carolina, Donut, Simmons, fucking  _ Al Capone _ ...  _ Fox _ was nowhere on that list, so when he nearly ran into her at an intersection between hallways, he figured she must be lost.

“Um, are you  _ looking _ for something?”

“Pretty sure I wouldn’t be heading to the medbay unless I meant to,” Fox replied evenly as she stepped into the medbay. 

“No, I mean, that thing with  _ Locus? _ Shouldn’t you be-”

“Talking to Kimball still?”  

Tucker frowned. “ _ Yeah?! _ I mean, from what some of Kimball’s men are saying,  _ you _ convinced her to let Locus out in the first place.”

“Ohhhh, that’s why we’re having an interrogation,” Fox said, stopping and turning on her heel to face him. “ _ You _ think I used some horrible manipulation tactics to get what I wanted.”

“ _ Did _ you?”

Fox held his gaze for a moment, then shrugged. “I mean, call it what you want, but I just asked her to weigh the pros and cons of the whole thing, and she finally agreed to it.”

_ “Seriously?!”  _ Tucker spluttered. “Are you out of your  _ mind?! _ ” he exclaimed, drawing the attention of everyone within earshot. “Were you not  _ listening _ when we told you about all the shit he’s done? He’s not someone you can  _ work _ with, Fox!”

“And yet...” Fox said flatly. “I mean, you  _ were _ paying attention out there, right? He literally saved Stripes’ life. And also killed a bunch of pirates. If you ask me, we make a pretty good team. And it’s not like he plans on hurting you guys. He made that pretty clear.”

Tucker stared at her incredulously. “You’re crazy,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re out of your fucking mind.”

“What did you expect? I was stuck on a moon by myself for four years,” Fox chuckled. “Not to change the subject, by the way, but you wouldn’t happen to know where I could find Doctor Grey, do you?”

Tucker blinked. “Why, are you hurt?”

“No, no. Kimball and I both figured that since I’m a doctor, I might as well help out too.”

“Wait, like a  _ legit  _ doctor?” Tucker asked. Sure, she had patched him up on Nalome, but he had figured that was just basic field training.

“How do you think I managed to put you back together again after you crashed on my moon?,” Fox replied. “So are you gonna help me find her or what?”

Tucker sighed, adjusting the position of his helmet under his arm and deciding that Hodges and McDevitt could wait a little longer. “Follow me,” he said, starting in the direction of Grey’s office. This was going to be interesting.

 

 

* * *

 

Grey had just finished a minor surgery involving a bullet lodged in a soldier’s shoulder and was on her way to her office when Kimball informed her through the comm in her ear that someone named ‘Fox’ was looking for her. 

_ Fox…. Fox, Fox, Fox,  _ Grey thought as she turned the corner and stopped when she saw Tucker and that one soldier that she had seen briefly on the field earlier today. “ _ You _ are Fox!” she exclaimed, pointing at her with the hand that wasn’t occupied with documents and coffee.

“That I am,” the woman replied cheerfully and with a nod.

“Excellent!” Grey bubbled as she unlocked her office, leaned in, and deposited the documents on her desk. She grabbed her favorite pen before she closed the door and brushed past the two. “Well, follow me,” she chimed without looking back, sticking her pen behind her ear. “What did you need me for? Got a fever? Bullet wound? Hypertension? Broken bone?” She paused with sudden realization and turned on her heel and gestured with her mug at Fox, nearly sloshing coffee onto the floor. “ _ You’re _ not in the system.”

“Well, I  _ am _ the new girl,” Fox replied. 

“You’re going to need a  _ checkup! _ ” Grey exclaimed in a singsong voice, turning and continuing onward. 

“Well I don’t have any plans,” she heard Fox say.

“Perfect,” Grey grinned, leading them towards the patient wing. If either of them were hurt, they would have checked in for a check _ up.  _ And she knew that three of Tucker’s men had been injured in today’s skirmish. 

“To answer your other question,” Fox continued, “I’m a doctor too, so Kimball suggested I come down and help.”

“ _ Really? _ ” Grey asked, looking back at her.  _ That _ was interesting. Certainly useful information to have. Out of all the things she had expected the new girl to be, a doctor wasn’t exactly one of them. Especially after seeing how she fought. “What’s your specialty?”

“Biomechanical engineering.”

_ That _ made Grey stop in her tracks. She turned and looked back at Fox, a grin spreading across her face. “Oh, you just have  _ perfect _ timing, then!” Then she gestured with her free hand and turned and continued walking, picking up her pace. When they reached the patient wing, she pointed down the hall and said, “Tucker, your men will be in the third-to-last room down there. We figured we’d put them together. Gale is still in surgery, I’m afraid, so you’ll just have to wait.”

“Got it!” Tucker replied, then to Fox said, “I’ll see you later,” before starting in the direction Grey had sent him.

Grey nodded at him as he walked past, and pulled her datapad out of her labcoat, looking over the message that had popped up. Then she turned and headed back the way they’d come. “Follow me!” she chimed, waiting until Fox was at her side before she spoke again. “I have a patient who took some damage from a grenade to one of his prosthetics.  _ Normally _ I would handle this on my own, but since you’re here, and you want to help, I thought maybe you could take care of it instead?” She glanced at Fox with a smile.

“You want me to prove myself.”

Grey’s smile only widened.  _ Now _ she was catching on. “Of course! And I’m sure Matthews would be more than happy to have a new face working on him.”

Fox tilted her head to one side. “Not one of the Reds and Blues then?” she asked.

“Nope!” Grey replied. “I got pinged that he was in the waiting room just a minute ago. I’ll have him called in so you can take a look at him.” She paused, looking Fox up and down. “I was going to say that you should go change into scrubs, but I don’t think we have any your size.”

Fox let out a laugh. “I get that a lot,” she said good-naturedly. “I can make do with whatever you have for me.”

“Good!” Grey said. “Now let me go get his file, and then I’ll bring you to him!”

 

* * *

 

“Today went  _ far _ better than...I mean, I was expecting hostility and stubbornness and--not  _ compliance!” _ Kimball exclaimed, pacing back and forth in front of Wash and Carolina, who had already been briefed on her earlier conversation with Fox, and were listening with interest. “I know he said that he wanted to help, but this puts things into a whole new perspective that I can’t say I was ready for.”

“He  _ did _ help us out on Nalome,” Carolina said.

“Not to mention that he was probably trying to avoid getting on Fox’s bad side,” Wash added. “I mean, we  _ all _ saw how she fought today.”

“I think...” Kimball started, looking down at the scattered documents on her desk.  _ God _ she had a lot of paperwork to do. “I think there’s a possibility we could use this to our advantage.”

“How so?” Wash asked, tilting his head to one side.

“This is going to sound crazy,” Kimball sighed, trying to think of how she wanted to word this, “but I think pairing the two of them together permanently could potentially provide us with a bit of extra help.” She looked up at the two before her before she continued. “Both of them  _ know _ Charon. And if we can get them to work together, they might be able to help us find a way to beat Hargrove. We already saw what they came up with in the five minutes we left them alone in that interrogation room.”

Carolina and Wash exchanged a glance, and Kimball wondered what they were thinking. The way Wash was holding himself made it very clear he wasn’t particularly comfortable with the idea of giving Locus any amount of slack. She didn’t blame him.

“They’ve already proven to have some amount of synergy,” Wash began. “Back on Nalome, they brought CORA down together, and today we saw that they’re capable of synching with one another in a fight. And Fox has been going down and talking to him at the end of every day since we got back, anyways. She already knows him pretty well.”

Carolina nodded. “They  _ do _ have chemistry. But you said that Fox came to you with the idea of sending both of them out today. Even with the reasoning she gave, I think we should be cautious about how we approach this. We don’t really know exactly what she wants.”

“She mentioned that she wanted to use him to help bring Hargrove down when I first met her,” Kimball explained. “What she sees in him exactly is beyond me, but considering that she not only assisted you on your mission, but also brought back resources from the moon, and provided support today, I think it’s fair to say that her personal goal is clear-cut. However, that doesn’t mean we won’t still be careful. Fox is still new here, so we don’t know much about her yet. I plan on monitoring her over the next few days to see if we can get a clearer picture.”

“And if she meets your expectations, what’s the next step?” Wash asked.

Kimball looked away and crossed her arms. “I don’t like the idea of putting Locus on a leash any more than either of you do. What he and Felix did is inexcusable. But Fox said that they both came back because they wanted to help, and thus far their actions have reflected this.” She looked back at the two across from her. “If we can find a way to keep Locus under control, he could be a very useful asset. And Fox has already proven willing to try to work with him. So I think, at the very least, it might be worth trying to pair them together.”

“I think that’s a good call,” Wash said after a moment, much to Kimball’s surprise. 

“I...think it’s risky,” Carolina said slowly. “But it could work if done correctly.”

Kimball watched them for a moment, then nodded. “I’m going to sit on this for the next few days before we talk about it again. In the meantime, I want the two of you to keep an eye on both of them. The more information we have, the easier it’ll be to make a choice. I also need the two of you to keep this quiet. I don’t like having to do this, but for the sake of not causing a panic, it’s best that we keep this amongst ourselves until a decision is made. For now, you’re both dismissed.”

Both Wash and Carolina turned to leave.

“And Wash?”

Wash froze and looked back at her.

“Get that shoulder checked out,” Kimball said with a sigh.

Wash gave her a nod, and she could have sworn there was the ghost of a chuckle in his voice when he said, “copy that.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“How’s the arm?” Wash asked when he ran into Matthews in the hallway on the way to the med bay. After speaking to Kimball, he had gone down to the motor pool to see if he could help in any way instead of attending to his shoulder. It wasn’t that bad of an injury anyways, and he needed something to do after the earlier events of today. Anything to keep his hands busy and his mind occupied. Grif had mentioned the grenade Matthews had been hurt by while he was down there before shooing him away when he noticed his injury. It was good to see that he was okay.

“Fixed!” Matthews exclaimed. “It went way faster than I was expecting!”

Wash tilted his head slightly. Matthews had always had a way of being a tad over-excited about things, which sometimes led to exaggeration. “I guess the damage wasn’t as bad as it looked.”

“That’s the thing, though,” Matthews exclaimed, realizing he was blocking hallway traffic as a soldier brushed past him, and stepped off to the side where Wash was. “It  _ was _ bad. But Fox put everything back together in an hour!”

Under his helmet, Wash blinked in surprise. It seemed Fox was already putting her skills to good use. “Well, I’m glad you’re alright,” he said. “Grif was looking for you in the motor pool, by the way,” he added.

“I figured,” Matthews sighed. “Him and Lopez are probably at each other’s throats by now.”

“Probably,” Wash said, but didn’t have the energy to sound amused. 

“I just hope that they don’t kill each other before they finish their jobs. They’ve got a lot of work to do over the next few days fixing up those Warthogs and Pelicans,” Matthews continued. He was silent for a moment, then said, “I should go make sure Lopez isn’t trying to strangle Grif again. See you later, Wash!” 

Wash watched as Matthews ducked his head and walked away. “Yeah,” he muttered, “a lot of work.” With a sigh, he shook his head and continued down the hall. He needed to get this shoulder checked out before anyone else yelled at him for it.

 

* * *

 

Tucker stared up at the ceiling of the med bay waiting room, watching the fluorescent lights through half-lidded eyes. He had run into Wash on his way out, and despite the other man’s insistence to do otherwise, had decided to sit and wait for him.  _ Someone _ had to make sure the guy didn’t immediately run off and do something that would agitate his injuries further. 

With a sigh, Tucker propped his elbow against the armrest of the seat he was in and cupped his cheek in his hand, opting to close his eyes for a little bit. He had nearly dozed off when the sound of approaching footsteps roused him, and he looked over blearily to see Wash step into the waiting room. Yawning, Tucker straightened up and stretched before standing and waiting for Wash to reach him.

“I told you not to wait for me,” Wash said when he stopped in front of Tucker, helmet tucked under one arm, and an expression that was more tired than annoyed on his face. 

_ I wanted to make sure you were okay,  _ Tucker thought, then froze when Wash’s expression changed to surprise, and realized that he had  _ totally _ just said that out loud. 

Fuck.

“It...was just a scratch, Tucker,” Wash said, an awkward, hesitant smile forming on his face. 

“Uh. Well. I know. I just--You sort of...went on a mission right after the fight? And I didn’t know if it got worse?”  _ Great save. A-plus. You’re just the  _ **_king_ ** _ of conversation today.  _ Tucker forced a crooked smile onto his face that he hoped didn’t look as much like a grimace as it felt. 

Wash stared at him like-- like he wasn’t sure how to process the fucking  _ trainwreck _ he was staring at. “Well...I appreciate the concern. But your time would have been much better spent helping out.”

Tucker’s smile faded and he glanced guiltily away. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I was gonna head there the minute you came out, anyways. So…” he aimed a finger in the direction of the medbay exit, “I’m gonna go…”

“Right behind you,” Wash said, and put his helmet on.

Tucker was midway through turning when he froze and looked back at Wash. “Dude, you  _ just _ finished getting stitches. Like  _ fuck _ you’re coming with me.”

“Tucker, I’m not going to sit around when there’s work to be done. The injury wasn’t that bad to begin with. I can  _ handle _ it,” Wash said firmly.

Tucker scrunched up his face a bit at that, then huffed out, “just be fucking careful, okay?”

And there was a wry note in Wash’s voice when he brushed past and said, “you don’t need to worry about me, Captain Tucker. I’ll be fine.”

Tucker just sighed, shoved on his helmet, and followed him out. 

The rest of the day was spent picking up odd jobs around headquarters to help out. Tucker found himself nagging Wash several times about his shoulder, and when Carolina joined them, she did the same. At least Wash  _ listened _ to  _ her. _

Kinda.

By the time they received word that they were relieved of duty for the evening, Tucker barely had any energy to spare. So when Wash suggested that they go for a quick walk around the perimeter, Tucker had half a mind to dig his heels in and head to quarters instead. 

But it wasn’t like he could just  _ leave _ Wash to venture out at night, right after they’d been attacked by space pirates. So he went with him, gun gripped tightly in his hands, eyes darting around to catch any pirates that might still be around, focusing on every step so his feet didn’t drag on the trail. 

And when they made it to the top of the cliff overlooking headquarters, Wash stopped, and Tucker fell into place next to him without a second thought. 

Wash was quiet for a while, looking down at the valley. And Tucker followed his gaze, eyes falling on the soldiers milling about below, their forms illuminated by the portable spotlights that had been brought out when the sun had set. The storm that had been brewing around the same time the pirates had attacked had passed several hours ago, and now the air was thick and humid. Back home, this sort of weather would have prompted a symphony of insects chirping late into the night. But this wasn’t home. And the war had torn apart the jungle in such a way that hearing  _ any _ sort of animal was a rare occurrence. 

Tucker hated it. The distant chirping of insects outside his window had always been a comfort to him when he’d awoken late at night in a cold sweat back at Valhalla. Listening to them had always grounded him, no matter what sort of nightmare he had. But here, there was only silence. And when he woke with the words “Freckles,  _ shake! _ ” echoing in his head, there was nothing to pull him back. 

Tucker looked over at Wash, who hadn’t moved, and wondered if he felt the same way. It was no secret that the man had his fair share of demons that kept him awake. The bags under his eyes were a testament to that. But if the lack of natural sounds on Chorus ever bothered him, Wash had kept it to himself. 

“There’s something I want you to know, but I need you to promise not to repeat it to anyone else,” Wash said suddenly, interrupting Tucker’s thoughts. 

“What is it?” Tucker asked, allowing a hint of suspicion to creep into his voice. It had to be serious if Wash wanted it to stay a secret. 

“After what happened today, Kimball is thinking about letting Fox work with Locus. Carolina and I have been asked to keep an eye on her for the next few days to make sure she’s fit for the job,” Wash said, looking over at Tucker.

Tucker felt his mouth dry up. Then he shook it off and said, “okay, you got me. I almost fell for that,” in a forced joking tone. 

“I was being serious,” Wash said flatly. 

Tucker stared. “Okay, wait, hold on,” he said, stepping back and shaking his head. “It’s only been a few  _ days _ . How the hell did Fox convince Kimball to suddenly start treating Locus like he’s one of the good guys?!”

“Fox had nothing to do with this,” Wash replied. “From what I can tell, Kimball got the idea after watching the two of them fight together.”

Under his helmet, Tucker clenched his jaw. “Wash, we  _ have _ to tell the others about this.”

Wash nodded.  “I’m going to talk to Carolina and see how she wants to approach the situation. The only reason I’m telling you now is because I need you to be on board with this.”

Tucker hissed out a breath between his teeth. “Look, man, you know I got your back, but after what he  _ did _ to you--”

“I  _ know _ , Tucker,” Wash said, with some exasperation in his voice. “And I’m going to discuss it with Fox once everything’s settled down a little bit.”

“I just think this is a really bad idea,” Tucker said, with less force than he would have liked. “I mean, the guy tried to kill  _ everyone _ on this planet. Just because he turned on Felix, doesn’t mean he’s suddenly a good person.”

“I never said he was.”

“Then what--!” Tucker cut off and took a deep breath, then started again in a more even tone. “Then  _ what  _ do you  _ see _ in him that makes you wanna go along with this?”

Wash didn’t answer, and instead looked away and was silent for some time before he spoke again. “When I was with the Meta, Maine was still in there. Sometimes there would be...flickers of him. Times when his personality showed through. And I...I never encouraged him to fight back, to try to force his way back for good.”

Tucker could have sworn there was a slight wobble in Wash’s voice when he said that. 

“There isn’t a day I don’t regret that,” Wash continued. “I don’t know if I could have saved him, but I should have tried. But I didn’t. There was a human being still in there, and I turned my back on him.”

Tucker looked away, at a loss for words. This was new information to him. And even though he couldn’t quite see the connection to the previous topic, the fact that Wash was confiding in him about something so personal put a sensation in Tucker’s chest that he couldn’t quite describe. “I don’t get it,” he said finally, looking back at Wash. “What does this have anything to do with Locus?”

Wash turned to him, head tilted slightly, and Tucker could imagine the thoughtful look he was giving him under his helmet. “During the fight at The Purge, and even a bit before then, I tried to appeal to his more...human side. I like to think it had some sort of effect on him. I don’t know if he would have turned on Felix, or even tried to help us on Nalome if it hadn’t.” Wash looked away again, back over the valley. “I...understand him. At least a little bit. And I think that if he’s pushed to fight back against what he  _ was _ , that maybe that side of him-- the more human side --might win.” Wash tilted his head down slightly. “But we’re not the right people to push him like that. At least, I don’t think we are. Sure, we can help, but at the end of the day, we were once enemies, and it’ll take time for all of us to adjust.”

“That’s why you want to go along with letting Fox work with him,” Tucker said in sudden realization. And it made sense. She hadn’t known him beforehand. Her view of him was completely unbiased. Not only that, but she seemed willing to try to help him. And the more he thought about it, the more it seemed like it could work. Sure, Fox had pushed Kimball into setting Locus loose on the pirates, but once the two of them were out there, they had worked together far better than Tucker ever could have expected. But that didn’t stop him from worrying. Locus’ previous hostility, and his past fixation on Wash were both considerably unnerving. “Are...are you okay with this?” Tucker asked hesitantly.

And Wash reached a hand up and rubbed the back of his neck-- an action Tucker had come to associate with the man being under significant stress. “I’m not sure.” He let his hand drop with a sigh. “I honestly don’t think Locus is a threat to us anymore. And the best way to know that for sure is to move forward with what Kimball has in mind.”

Tucker wondered if Wash really believed that, or if he was just saying what he felt needed to be said. “We can always throw the fucker back in a cell, right?” he asked.

Wash looked back at him. “Right.”

Tucker forced a smile that he knew Wash couldn’t see onto his face. “Then I guess it could work.”

Wash was silent for a while, then nodded. “Thank you, Tucker.”

“Dude.”

“What?”

“Are you getting sappy with me?”

_ “Tucker!” _

Tucker laughed, grateful that the tension in the air was finally beginning to defuse. “I’m  _ kidding. _ Look, just--” he shook his head, then grew serious. “We need to tell the others, okay? Like it’s great that you told me and all, and I know that Caboose, and Donut, and probably Sarge won’t  _ give _ a fuck about what happens, but Simmons and Grif will lose their shit.”

“Tucker, I promise I’ll tell them. Tomorrow,” Wash said. “But right now, we should head back. It’s getting late, and we could both use some rest.”

“Lead the way,” Tucker said, recalling what Wash had said to him previously at the medbay.

Wash just let out a well-humored sigh and shook his head, then brushed past him and started down the trail. Tucker stole one last look out at the valley, then jogged to catch up with him.

 

* * *

 

Simmons yawned and leaned backwards, extending his arms over his head in a stretch and pulling a face as he did so. It felt good to stand after being hunched over broken and damaged equipment all day. He’d been stuck in the motor pool for most of the morning, working alongside Grif and Lopez to fix up some of the Warthogs that had taken heat during yesterday’s fight. 

He looked back at the engine he had been fixing, then decided to take a break instead of diving back into it. His back hurt enough anyways, and leaning back over the workbench it was on would only make it worse if he didn’t give himself some time off. So he opted for a lap around the motor pool, figuring he could check in on everyone else while he did so.

His lieutenant, McAllister, was working with Matthews on another Warthog. Matthews was underneath the vehicle, while McAllister had the hood popped. From the sound of it, as Simmons got closer, McAllister was attempting to talk Matthews through whatever he was working on. 

“Where’d you say that was?” Matthews asked.

McAllister sighed. “It’s next to the fuel filter,” she replied, elbows-deep under the Warthog’s hood.

“Is that the big chunky thing?”

McAllister pulled her hands out of the Warthog and leaned over towards where Matthews’ feet were sticking out from under the vehicle. “Maybe we should just let Captain Grif take a look at this one,” she said after a moment, then looked up when she noticed Simmons. “Oh, hello Captain Simmons!” she exclaimed with a wave.

“How’s it coming?” Simmons asked, approaching and stopping near Matthews’ feet.

“Uh, not amazing since I don’t know anything about cars,” Matthews replied, sliding out from under the Warthog. His armor was covered in some sort of black grime. Simmons didn’t want to know what it was. 

“Well, I’m pretty sure I saw diagrams around here  _ somewhere _ ,” Simmons replied, stepping back when Matthews stood and brushed himself off.

“I  _ tried _ looking for them,” Matthews said. “Maybe I just missed them.”

“Well, why don’t you two take five, then go looking for them. You’ve been working hard,” Simmons suggested.

Both Matthews and McAllister perked up at that. “Gosh, thanks Captain Simmons!” McAllister chimed. 

“I’m gonna go get a snack, you wanna come with?” Matthews asked her.

“Nah, I’m gonna practice my serve. Andersmith challenged me to a match after things settle down,” McAllister replied, heading over to a workbench backed against the wall and grabbed the volleyball that was sitting underneath it. 

“Just don’t knock anything important over, or else Lopez might have a fit,” Simmons warned her, walking past. 

“Roger that!”

Simmons watched as she made her way to a clear area of the motor pool, looking over when Matthews gave her a wave, then headed out. With a sigh, he continued his lap, giving a nod to Lopez as he passed him. Then he stopped when he realized who was missing, and turned back and asked, “hey Lopez, you seen Grif?”

_ “ _ _ Probablemente está siendo perezoso,” _ Lopez replied flatly.

“Over where?” Simmons asked.

_ “No soy su niñera. No sé.” _

_ “What _ about babies?”

Lopez let out a world-weary sigh and pointed towards the other side of the motor pool.  _ “Lo vi allí.” _

Simmons looked in the direction Lopez was pointing in, then turned back to him and said, “thanks, buddy!”

_ “ _ _ Te odio.” _

Simmons headed towards where Lopez had pointed, picking his way through the maze of shelves and support beams and appliances. He stopped when he heard the distinct sound of a bag being opened.  _ Seriously? _ He continued forward again, slowly, leaning around the back of the Warthog nearest to him. It was definitely Grif. He had the hood of a Warthog popped, and Simmons could hear him munching on something from where he was. “Grif, you’re not eating  _ chips _ over a Warthog engine, are you?”

Grif leaned out, helmet off, potato chip grease on his face, and the bag in his hands. “No,” he said. 

Simmons sighed and approached him. “You’re going to blow something  _ up! _ ”

Grif rolled his eyes and pulled another chip out and stuffing it in his mouth. “No I won’t.”

Simmons let out a frustrated groan and reached for the bag. “You can’t have greasy stuff like that around Warthogs. It’s a fire haza- _ AUGHGOD!”  _ Simmons’ foot caught on a cable on the floor and he pitched forwards, eyes opening wide in shock when he realized that he hadn’t hit the floor. He stared down at a pair of orange-armored feet for a second, then the puzzle pieces connected and he looked up at Grif, who had caught him.

“Dude.”

Simmons was  _ very _ grateful that he hadn’t taken his helmet off, otherwise Grif would have seen just how red he turned in that moment. “S-sorry.”

“Whatever, man. Get your feet under you. I’m not gonna hold you up all day.”

Simmons realized that he was, in fact, still being held up by Grif, and turned almost as red as his armor. He was very  _ very _ grateful that he hadn’t taken his helmet off. He stumbled backwards away from Grif, then dusted himself off. “You got  _ chip grease _ all over me!” he exclaimed.

Grif shrugged. “I could have just let you fall.”

Simmons let out a huffy breath and grabbed a rag hanging out of a toolbox on a nearby shelf. Muttering under his breath about chips and fire hazards and loose cables, he did his best to wipe off the grease, giving up when he only smeared it, and what looked like oil that was on the cloth, across his chest plate. Frustrated, he tossed the rag back on the shelf and looked back at Grif, who had an amused grin stretched across his face. “That’s not funny.”

“It’s  _ pretty _ funny.”

“Are you  _ trying _ to get in trouble?”

“Are you gonna  _ tattle _ on me?”

“I-- _ oh! _ ” Simmons growled. “Just-- fuck it. Whatever!” He looked away and took a deep breath.  _ That’s right. Count to ten. No need to get any more worked up. _ “What have you been up to?” he asked once he was sure he had his emotions back in check.

“Had to replace like,  _ half _ of the shit under this thing’s hood,” Grif replied, knocking a fist against the frame of the Warthog, that same smile still on his face. “Why?”

“Just checking in,” Simmons replied. 

“Well, do you need something?”

“No-- I was just-- I needed a break, that’s all.”

Grif’s grin grew wider. “I guess that makes  _ you _ more of a slacker than I am.”

“My back hurt, I’ve been hunched over machinery all day,” Simmons replied.

Grif’s smile faded, and he just nodded. And Simmons couldn’t help but feel like there was something wrong. “Well, you probably earned the break then,” Grif said, turning back to the Warthog. “ I still have a ways to go with this piece of shit. Some jackass drove it into a tree. If we weren’t short enough on vehicles, I’d say it’s totaled.”

And there was something not quite right about his tone. And Simmons wasn’t sure what it was, but he knew he didn’t like it. “Uh...are you...okay?”

Grif looked back at him sharply. “What? No. I’m fine.” He turned his head away and scratched his temple. “It’s just a lot of work.”

“Do you...wanna talk about it?”

Grif sighed. “We both still have work to do. The sooner it gets done, the sooner I can grab some food and sleep.”

“Well...okay then,” Simmons said, and stood in uncomfortable silence for a moment before he realized that the conversation was over. Head down, he slunk back to his work station and pulled off his helmet with a sigh. Everything was so tense now. After the fight on  _ The Staff of Charon, _ everyone had expected the war to be over. But the rabbit hole went deeper than they had ever imagined, and everyone was reacting differently to it. So it made sense that Grif’s mood might be a little off, right? 

Simmons stared down at the visor of his helmet, then set it down on the workbench. He ran a hand through his hair, then grabbed his tools and got back to work on the engine. He kept his head down for the next few hours, only looking up once when he heard Matthews and McAllister bickering about something. He was nearly finished when he heard a set of footsteps headed towards him. Figuring that it was just someone looking for a tool off of one of the shelves, he kept his head down. 

“We need to talk.”

He looked up when Grif dropped a toolbox on the workbench he was at and leaned against the wall. He froze for a moment, the words setting off a thousand alarms in his head. Then he realized that Grif had probably decided to open up about what was bothering him earlier, took a deep breath and said, “is something wrong?”

Grif scratched his cheek with the hand that wasn’t holding his helmet and looked away. “It’s about the fight yesterday.”

_ Oh.  _ “Uh, okay. What about it?” Simmons asked, more confused than anxious now. 

“Kimball had you help her stop a radio jammer.”

“Yeah?”

Grif looked away, an unreadable expression on his face. “I heard from Bitters what happened.”

Simmons frowned. “Grif, are you...upset? I-I don’t understand--”

Grif cut him off with a sigh and set his helmet down next to where Simmons had put his on the workbench. “One of the pirates tried to kill Kimball.”

“Yeah. She’s kind of the boss around here. It makes sense,” Simmons replied, still horribly confused.

“I just don’t like how it went,” Grif said unhappily. “What if they hadn’t targeted her?”

“Then she wouldn’t have needed a trip to Doctor Grey?” Simmons suggested.

Grif’s brows knit together in a frown. “That’s not what I meant.”

And Simmons was quiet for a moment, thinking hard about what it could be that Grif was trying to say. Then it hit him. “You’re worried about  _ me, _ aren’t you?”

Grif rubbed the back of his head and stared at the floor. “You could have been hurt,” he mumbled.

Simmons blinked and straightened up. “I wasn’t though. They didn’t care about me. I was just the guy working on the radio jammer. Kimball and Bitters were the ones attacking the pirates.”

Grif let out a sigh. “It’s so stupid,” he said, shaking his head. Simmons wondered exactly what he was referring to.

“We all thought this whole thing was over,” Simmons said, trying to be helpful.

“Serves us right,” Grif huffed. “Why the fuck would any of us think we’d get let off so easily?”

Simmons wished he had an answer for that. But instead he just shrugged and looked away. “I mean, at least we’re all still together, right?”

“No we’re not. Not all of us.”

And Simmons felt a stab in his chest, because Grif had to be thinking of Church, or his sister, or maybe even Tex. And he realized that Grif hadn’t really talked much about what had happened on  _ The Staff of Charon. _ And that, sure, Church and Grif hadn’t really ever gotten  _ along _ , but he’d always been around. And that he had no idea how Grif actually  _ felt _ about the whole thing. And somehow, that made him feel absolutely terrible.

“I just...want you to be careful. All of you. Especially after yesterday...and what happened on Nalome. I just have a bad feeling,” Grif said, his face screwing up slightly, like he was trying to hide whatever he was feeling. “We already lost Church. I’m not burying anymore friends.”

Simmons had half a mind to take his hand, to do  _ something _ . Because Grif had that look on his face again; the one he always had when he was trying to look like he had it together. It was the same face he’d worn when he found out that his sister had been put on Blue team. Simmons hated that face. And so he reached for Grif’s hand, but froze when Grif pulled back and crossed his arms. 

With a sigh, Simmons let his hand drop and looked away. “I-I’ll be more careful. Okay? At least I’ll try to.”

Grif narrowed his eyes, still not looking at him, and nodded. 

Simmons let the silence stretch between the two of them for a moment, then raised a fist to his mouth and cleared his throat. “Um, I should probably finish up with this thing,” he said, nodding at the engine on the workbench. 

Grif looked back at him, appearing almost startled to be addressed. “Well,” he began uncomfortably, “I finished up with that other Warthog. Lopez is gonna fix the shell later. So I’m gonna go grab some food.” He picked up his helmet and turned. “I’ll be seeing you.”

Simmons stared after him, a knot forming in his stomach. “Yeah…” He watched him step out of the motor pool, then turned back to the engine. He stared at it for a moment, all drive to work on it vanished. “Fuck,” he sighed, rubbing his forehead. He was about to force himself back into it when he heard McAllister and Matthews bickering again. Frowning, he looked over in their direction, listening in on their conversation. 

“Buddy, my aim is  _ way _ better than  _ Palomo’s,” _ McAllister said, closing the hood of the Warthog her and Matthews had been working on. “There’s no way Andersmith is gonna beat me.”

“Oh yeah?” Matthews said, “then hit  _ that!” _ He whirled and pointed at an empty can of petroleum sitting on the hood of one of the Warthogs.

“Pft, that’s  _ easy!” _ McAllister exclaimed, holding up her volleyball smugly. “I’ll take that out, first try.”

“Bet you won’t!”

“Bet I  _ will!” _

“Bet you won’t,  _ and _ you’ll wreck a bunch of shit!”

“Well guess who’s about to get  _ served!”  _ McAllister shot back, then turned, threw the ball up into the air, and served it missing the petroleum can entirely and hurtling right at Fox’s face as she walked into the motor pool. 

Simmons held his breath, watching as Fox’s hands flew up and caught the ball before it hit her, then turned towards the direction it had come from.

McAllister stood stock still like a deer in the headlights, hands curled into fists at her sides and shoulders hunched in guilty anticipation. “Sorry!” she squeaked out.

“I take it this belongs to you?” Fox asked, walking over to her and holding the ball out to her.

McAllister practically snatched it from her hands and tucked it under her arm like she was trying to hide the evidence. “I was aiming for the...can,” she said lamely.

Simmons dropped his face into the palm of his hand. At least it didn’t seem like Fox was upset. 

“Well, Volleyball, honey, you  _ missed,” _ Fox replied.

“Um, you’re talking to...my  _ ball?” _ McAllister asked, tilting her head to one side. 

“No, that’s your new nickname. Consider it retribution for almost hitting me in the face,” Fox said with a smile in her voice.

Simmons couldn’t help but grin at that, and he looked over when he heard Matthews burst out laughing. It was certainly a fitting nickname, to say the least. 

McAllister’s shoulders sank, and she let out a huff. “I guess it could be  _ worse. _ ”

“Oh, this is a curse that will haunt you forever, young one,” Fox said sagely, patting her on the shoulder. “Soon, this will be the only name anyone knows you by,” then she turned and looked towards Matthews. “Now  _ you _ need to come with me. Doctor Grey wants to run some tests on that arm of yours.”

“But you fixed it!” Matthews protested.

“Honey, I am  _ very _ much aware, but if we don’t run these tests, it could malfunction and--” she gasped and held a hand comically over where her mouth would be under her helmet, then leaned in close and stage-whispered,  _ “explode.” _

Matthews stole a look back at Simmons for help. 

Simmons just shrugged. “This  _ is _ Grey we’re talking about,” he reminded.

Matthews’ spine went rigid and he looked back towards Fox. “Okay, uh, does she need me right now?”

“In the next ten minutes, preferably. It was sort of out of the blue. Hence why I’m running errands for her,” Fox said, with a hint of what might have been annoyance edging her voice. 

“W-well then I shouldn’t keep her waiting!” Matthews exclaimed, and darted for the exit, calling back, “I’ll see you later, Volleyball!”

Simmons bit his lip to keep from smiling when McAllister let out a frustrated growl at that. It was almost enough to make him feel better. Almost.

“You good?”

He froze and looked over when he saw Fox looking at him. “Uh, y-yeah. Yeah, I’m fine,” he stammered out, wondering what the giveaway was.

Fox tilted her head slightly, like she could tell he was lying, then said, “if you say so,” then turned and followed Matthews out.

Simmons watched her go, then turned back to McAllister, the humor fading from him. He still had a lot to do. At least his lieutenant had stuck around. A small smile working its way onto his face, he said, “hey  _ Volleyball, _ come on. There’s still a lot of work to do.”

McAllister turned towards him and whined, “Captain Simmons, not you  _ too! _ ”

And  _ that _ made Simmons laugh. “It’s fitting,” he said defensively. Then, “are you done with that Warthog?”

McAllister looked back at the Warthog her and Matthews had been working on. “Yeah,” she said, sounding defeated. 

“Then why don’t you help me with this engine. I’m almost finished, but I’ll need an extra set of hands putting it back,” Simmons suggested. 

“Copy that,” McAllister sighed, setting her volleyball on the ground by the Warthog’s tire and heading over to Simmons’ workspace. 

Simmons gave her a nod, then set back to work, finally finding the drive to finish. The knot of anxiety in his stomach still wasn’t gone, but with any luck, being able to fix  _ something _ would at least take his mind off of everything. 

He really hoped Grif was okay.

 

* * *

 

Wash paced back and forth inside of the hangar. The space was, thankfully, empty, as none of the aircrafts had actually been brought out or damaged during yesterday’s fight. A good thing, considering that Wash needed the room to think. 

He’d promised Tucker that he would tell the other Reds and Blues about what was going on behind the scenes. He’d  _ promised. _ But Kimball had told him not to, and he wasn’t sure what sort of fire he’d be facing if he did. Not that he didn’t think he could handle it. He’d certainly had worse in the past. But it was the fact that she wanted it kept secret at  _ all _ that worried him some.

There was no doubt that Kimball’s faith had been shaken when Felix had betrayed her. But Wash could tell that she was still trying to believe in everyone around her. Still, as much as he didn’t want to be involved in  _ any _ of the mess that was happening around him at the moment, he still hated the idea that he could be damaging her ability to trust him. 

It was a consequence he would have to live with, he figured. Because truth be told, the Reds and Blues  _ deserved _ to know what happened next. And with things as tense as they were now, Wash didn’t want to risk hurting his teammates. They were family. They came  _ first. _

So he took a deep breath and reached out to Carolina over a private channel. “Carolina, could you meet me in the hangar? There’s something we need to talk about.”

“On my way,” came Carolina’s voice over comms.

_ And here we go _ . Wash barely had time to get settled before Carolina walked into the hangar, taking him by surprise. “That was fast,” he said. 

“I was passing by. Is something wrong?” Carolina asked, stopping next to him and putting a hand on her hip. 

“I…” Wash trailed off and thought for a moment, then sucked in a breath and said. “We need to tell the others what Kimball told us.”

Carolina stared at him for a moment, and he could  _ feel _ the look she was giving him past her visor. “She told us to keep it  _ quiet. _ ”

“I  _ know _ . But these are our  _ teammates  _ we’re talking about. We can’t keep something like this from them!” Wash exclaimed. “I already talked to Tucker yesterday.”

_ “Wash.” _ And there was that ‘dude how could you?’ voice that Carolina used whenever she was disappointed in someone. It had been a while since she’d used it on him. Wash almost forgot what it felt like. 

“I  _ know, _ Carolina. But it’ll be better for all of us if they’re on board with the idea already.”

Carolina sighed and looked away. “She’s not going to like this.”

“I’ll talk to her afterwards. It was my idea anyways,” Wash said. 

“You don’t get it. She was  _ relying _ on us.”

Under his helmet, Wash frowned. “I  _ know. _ But I’m not going behind our teammates’ backs. And neither should you, boss.”

Carolina tilted her head at him, and for a moment, Wash got an image of the glare she used to give him and the others with the helmet she had back before the upgrade. Then she let out a defeated sigh and said, “I didn’t like it either.”

“Sorry?” Wash asked, confused.

“That she wanted us to keep it quiet,” Carolina continued. “I’ve been meaning to talk to her about it, but I haven’t found the time. We’ve both been too busy.”

Wash blinked, relaxing a little. “Well...I’m...glad that you’re on board with this.” When Carolina had nothing to add, he opted to reach out over a private channel to his teammates.

“It’s not the right thing to do,” Carolina said when he had finished, with a sigh, “but neither is keeping it from the Reds and Blues. There aren’t any winners here.” 

Wash was about to reply when he heard the sound of voices echoing in the hall. A moment later, Sarge, Donut, Caboose, and Tucker filed in, gathering around him and Carolina. Wash caught Tucker’s gaze, and the latter gave him a nod.  

“Well  _ hey _ Carolina! You got here  _ fast! _ ” Donut observed.

“I was already here,” Carolina replied.

“Hmph, tryin’ to one-up us,” Sarge mumbled.

“Agent Washington! Did you see all of the rocks I moved!?” Caboose exclaimed.

“Er...no, Caboose. I didn’t. Sorry,” Wash said, wondering if Caboose was referencing the work he had done clearing rubble earlier.

“That’s okay. I can show you later!” Caboose said cheerfully.

“SORRY I’M LATE THERE WAS AN ENGINE THING!”

Wash turned back towards the entrance to the hangar, brows raised under his helmet, when he heard Simmons’ voice. The latter jogged across the space and stopped next to Sarge, panting.  

“It’s fine, Simmons,” Wash replied. “Have you seen Grif?”

“He was getting food,” Simmons replied. There was something in his tone that was a little concerning, but Wash didn’t dwell on it. 

“I’ll radio him,” Carolina volunteered, then turned away and put her hand to the side of her helmet. 

She was halfway through her transmission when a voice called out across the hangar, “I’m right here, take a chill pill!”

Wash looked back and watched as Grif made his way towards them at a casual pace, his helmet tucked under one arm, and his free hand holding a burrito. He stopped next to Donut and gave him a nod. 

“All we’re missing is Lopez,” Carolina reported.

“Yeah, I asked if he was coming and he just flipped me off,” Simmons replied. 

Wash sighed. It would have to do. He looked over at Carolina, and she gave him a nod. “Before we get started, I need you all to understand that none of what we’re about to tell you can be repeated to  _ anyone _ ,” Wash began, turning back to the Reds and Blues. He stopped when Donut raised his hand. “Yes, Donut?”

“Are you going to cut our hands off if we do?” Donut asked.

“Wh- _ no! _ Look, this-- this is  _ serious, _ okay?”

_ “How _ serious?” Sarge asked.

_ “Very _ serious,” Carolina replied, her voice firm. 

Wash gave her a grateful look before continuing. “After the fight yesterday, Kimball, Carolina, and I discussed the possibility of pairing Fox with Locus and having her work with him.”

Grif,who had taken a bite of his burrito before Wash started speaking again, doubled over coughing into his arm. Donut patted him on the back, saying “easy, buddy.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty serious,” Sarge said with a nod.

“Does that mean he’s gonna help us?” Caboose asked. 

“We’re not really sure. Right now, we’ve been asked to keep an eye on Fox to make sure that she’s capable of handling him,” Wash replied.

“Why the fuck weren’t we told about this too? Why keep it a secret?” Simmons asked.

“Kimball didn’t want to cause a panic,” Carolina told him. “She was worried that with tensions the way they are right now, someone might try something.”

“You’re awful calm about this,” Grif said in between coughs, turning to Tucker.

Tucker didn’t reply and instead looked to Wash for help.

“I told Tucker about all of this last night,” Wash replied. 

“Oh, so we get the sloppy seconds,” Grif growled. 

“I--  _ no.  _ Grif, that’s not-- I had to make sure this was the right choice.  _ Especially _ considering that it goes against direct orders from Kimball,” Wash said. 

Grif gave him an unhappy look, but didn’t say anything else. 

“The reason we’re telling you this now is because we need you to have an open mind about this. It’s no secret that everyone around here looks up to all of us. Our reactions will determine how  _ they _ react. And based off of what Kimball told us, she needs all of you to be okay with whatever happens next,” Carolina said. 

“Well, it’s not like he didn’t help us kill an evil AI or punch space pirates in the face,” Sarge reasoned with a shrug. “I’d say it’s worth a shot.”

“And we can always throw him back in jail,” Tucker added. 

“Yeah, but first we have to wait until he kills one of us, right?” Grif asked bitterly.

“I’m not really sure exactly what sort of boundaries Kimball plans to put in place,” Wash admitted, “but I doubt that they’ll be that flexible. Not to mention that we all know what Fox is capable of. I don’t think that Locus would try anything when she’s around.”

Grif opened his mouth to argue, but then shut it and looked away. “Yeah, okay. Still,” he muttered.

“What sort of stuff would they be doing?” Tucker asked. “You didn’t really say much last night.”

“We don’t really know, ourselves,” Carolina replied. “It’ll likely be similar to what we saw yesterday, combined with rehabilitation efforts.”

“Do you think it’ll work?” Simmons asked.

Wash exchanged a look with Carolina, then looked back at the Reds and Blues. “I do.”

“Well, that settles it for me. I’m down,” Sarge declared. 

“So am I!” Donut exclaimed. 

“Me too!” Caboose said.

“We can always kick his ass if something goes wrong,” Tucker added.

“I--” Simmons looked over at Grif, who frowned. “As long as you think it’ll work...I don’t see what could go wrong.”

Grif let out a frustrated sigh, looking around and realizing that the spotlight was on him. “Fuck,” he said after a moment. “He helped save our asses twice now. So...whatever. Fine. But if he fucks something or  _ someone _ up, he’s history.”

Wash nodded, satisfied with the response, then looked over at Carolina. “Boss?”

“It’s a good call” she replied. “But like we said before, we can’t let  _ anyone _ know about this, understand?”

Sarge gave her a snappy salute. “Yes ma’am!”

“When are we going to find out if Fox and Locus are getting paired?” Donut asked. 

“Soon,” Wash promised. 

“How soon?” Caboose asked.

“I don’t know, Caboose. But...it won’t be too long. Just be patient,” Wash replied. 

“Okay,” Caboose said, sounding unsatisfied. 

“Now, there’s still a lot of work to be done,” Carolina said, looking around at the others. “And if this takes any longer, we’ll be missed. So let’s get back to work. If any of you still want to talk about this, we can meet later, but for now, let’s move. And don’t talk about this in front of anyone who wasn’t here.”

Wash watched as his teammates dispersed, talking amongst themselves. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Carolina looking at him. He turned towards her, curious. 

“We need to go talk to Kimball,” she said.

Wash sighed and looked away. “Yeah,” he said. “What do you think she’ll say?”

“She’ll be disappointed, but she’ll understand,” Carolina replied. Wash looked back at her, startled, when he felt her hand on his shoulder. “We’re in this together,” she said. 

Wash gave her a grateful nod,  then looked on as she dropped her hand and headed for the hangar exit.

“Come on,” she said over her shoulder. “The sooner we get there, the sooner we’ll get it over with.”

Wash couldn’t argue with that. So he followed her.

 

* * *

 

“Honestly, it was kind of exciting to find out that there are a handful of people here with advanced biotics installed. Matthews told me that he got his after getting shot by a Mantis, which was probably  _ really _ awful when it happened, but I can tell he’s gotten mostly used to the arm since then, and--” Fox cut off and turned her head when one of the guards who had been standing watch behind her sighed, and he and his companion started to walk away. “Where are you two going?” she asked. 

Locus wondered the same thing. Fox had made a point of coming down and talking to him at the end of every day, which he had to admit, he appreciated. But even with the consistency, and the fact that it was unlikely that she would try something as foolish as attempting to break him out, the guards  _ always _ stuck around.

“General Kimball gave us permission to take a break when you come down from now on,” one of the guards said back over his shoulder, looking down at where Fox was seated cross-legged on the floor.

“Huh,” Fox replied, sounding genuinely surprised. “Ain’t that something? Well enjoy your break, I guess.”

Locus kept his eyes on the guards until they had stepped out of his range of view from inside his cell. Once they were gone, he looked back at Fox, and waited until she turned her head back towards him.

“I guess after yesterday, Kimball finally decided we’d both earned a bit more trust,” Fox said. Then she chuckled and shook her head. “Ah well, we should take what we can get.” And then, reached up and cupped her hands around the sides of her helmet, and as the airtight seal around her neck hissed, Locus suddenly remembered that he had no idea what she actually  _ looked _ like. He watched with curiosity as she set her helmet on the floor beside her and then pulled the white elastic headband that held back her dark hair off. She shook her head, and fluffed her hair a bit, pulling her bangs away from her face. “Yeesh. I’ve got helmet hair,” she said, scrunching up her nose, which Locus noticed had a large scar horizontally across it. Likely something she had gotten during the Great War, but he wasn’t about to ask.

“You wanna know something funny?” Fox asked, looking at him with eyes that were….startlingly blue. Not something Locus had expected, given her heavily Asian features. He wondered if they were biotics. 

“What?” he asked carefully. 

“When I first arrived on Nalome I had bubblegum pink hair. It looked so fucking ridiculous. I loved it though.” Fox gave him a big toothy grin. “You ever dye your hair?”

“No.”

“Hm,” Fox shrugged, closing her eyes for a moment as she did so, and Locus caught sight of a scar across her left eyelid. “It’s not  _ great _ for you, honestly. But I  _ love _ color, and natural hair gets so boring after a while, you know? I think I’m gonna see if I can dig up some dyes somewhere. I’m thinking auburn or ginger this time. I’ve always wondered what I’d look like as a redhead,” she said thoughtfully, turning her head away and tapping her chin. Then she looked back at him and said, “why don’t you take your helmet off? Give your eyes a break? You have that thing on every time I come down here. It’s not good for you, y’know?”

“No.” There was absolutely no way he was doing that. 

_ “Dude. _ It’s just  _ me _ ,” Fox said. “And it’s not like I’ve never seen your face before. I mean, I took your helmet off to make sure you didn’t have a broken fucking skull after you crashed.”

Locus figured as much, but it still didn’t change his stance on the matter. 

Fox narrowed her eyes at him in thought, then leaned back with a mischievous grin and said, “I’ll tell you how I got your  _ file.” _

And Locus wasn’t sure what was more appalling, the fact that she was baiting him, or the fact that it was  _ working. _ He  _ really _ wanted to know how she managed to get a hold of that file.  _ Especially _ if it contained all the information she had hinted at. He needed to know what she knew. So he sucked in a deep breath and gritted out,  _ “fine.” _

And Fox’s grin grew triumphant and a little smug. 

“But if you don’t keep your word…”

“Dude, I  _ will! _ ” Fox exclaimed. “I don’t break promises. Cross my heart!” She drew an ‘X’ over her heart, then looked at him expectantly.

Locus sighed. Might as well get it over with. He reached up and pulled his helmet off, setting it on the floor next to where he was seated.

And Fox just stared at him for a minute before saying, “you have really gorgeous eyes, you know that?”

Locus reached for his helmet.

Fox’s face immediately broke into a smile that was obviously holding back laughter. “Aw, no, no!” she exclaimed, waving her hands like she could stop him somehow, then finally giving into laughter. 

Locus glared at her, but set his helmet back down.

She must have noticed, because she calmed down shortly after, swiping tears out of her eyes. “I’m sorry. That was just the  _ cutest _ fucking thing-- is that how you  _ normally _ react when you get a compliment?”

Locus didn’t answer. He knew he’d just say something stupid. 

“Okay, alright, alright. I see you trying to burn a hole through me with that look,” Fox said. “So the  _ file,”  _ she began. “I have a friend who works for...do you know what Emblem is?”

Locus narrowed his eyes. He’d  _ heard _ that name before, but couldn’t quite put his finger one what it  _ was. _ “No.”

“Okay, so it’s the company that created an AI that basically overlooks the entire U.N.S.C. database. It was created more or less to guard the files of every single person operating within the U.N.S.C., living on a colony planet (Earth included), or has otherwise been registered into the system,” Fox explained. 

Locus blinked. “It has information on every living human?” He knew the U.N.S.C. database was huge, but he had always assumed that it only contained information on people who served under them. 

“Every living  _ person.  _ Aliens included,” Fox corrected. “So, as I was saying, I have a friend who works for Emblem, who is mutual friends with  _ another _ friend of mine who just so happens to have the hacking capabilities of a brand new, next gen, quantum-computer. So that friend, Charlie-- that’s his name. You don’t know him and your odds of meeting him are... _ ehh _ . So, whatever.  _ Charlie _ got a call from me that I relayed through a channel I hijacked when  _ The Staff of Charon _ was a smoking heap of scrap metal trying to make its way out of this star system. And I was like, ‘hey, what the fuck is going on down on Chorus? Shit’s on fire!’ And he goes ‘yo lemme do some Matrix hacking shit with the information that you gave me!’ And basically cross-referenced a bunch of shit that I told him (because you  _ bet _ I was listening in on the fuckin’ dumpster fire that was Hargrove’s ship) after my Emblem buddy got him a ticket into the system. And then,  _ sha-bang! _ Got your file.”

Locus was quiet for some time, processing this. Then he looked up at her and asked, “what  _ exactly _ did you tell Charlie that enabled you to find my file?”

Fox shrugged. “I heard some shit about two knuckleheads who called themselves Locus and Felix. Charlie was able to connect you to some bounty hunting shit back on Earth. I tried to get the file for Felix too, but Charlie didn’t have enough time and had to make it look like he was locked out of the system after bypassing the first level of security and then get the hell out of dodge so no one thought he got anything. Without the proper retinal scan, yours is the only file I’m gonna get.” She looked away. “If I ever get back to Earth, that’ll be a Matsukaze Matter.”

“A what?”

Fox blinked, looking almost startled, like he’d pulled her out of her train of thought. “Hm?”

“You said ‘Matsukaze Matter.’ What is that?” Locus asked, getting the creeping suspicion that something wasn’t quite right.

“Oh... _ uh. _ It’s just a saying,” Fox said. Locus had the distinct impression that she wasn’t being completely honest. “Speaking of which, I we never actually talked about the fight yesterday,” she mused, quickly changing the subject, propping her elbow against her knee and cupping her face in her hand. “There was just so much to  _ do _ . I meant to come down here and check on you though. Sorry I never got to it. How have you been holding up?”

“Fine…” Locus said, narrowing his eyes at her.

“What’s that look for?”

“There’s something you’re not telling me.”

Fox made a face. “To be fair, I only just met you. There’s a  _ lot _ I haven’t told you yet.” She waved a hand dismissively. “Look, just-- You’re okay, right? Like I know you weren’t really into the whole idea of killing those space pirates. And although you were a real champ about it and powered through...I  _ was _ worried.”

_ Worried about what? _ “There was nothing to worry  _ about.” _

“Well sure there was! You’re still  _ technically _ recovering from what happened on Nalome, and...I mean...You’ve had it rough, y’know? And I kinda put you in a tough position.” And there was something surprisingly earnest about the look she was giving him. 

Locus just sighed and looked away. If he was being honest with himself, he wasn't really sure  _ how _ he felt. The events of the other day had certainly kept him up the night before. There had been too much killing. And that one pirate--  _ what was his  _ **_name_ ** \--Locus couldn’t get him out of his head. Had he really needed to kill him? Couldn’t he have talked him down? He should have done better. He should have tried harder. That pirate’s death wasn’t  _ necessary. _ But instead of voicing any of this, he simply looked back at Fox and said, “I’m  _ fine.” _

And Fox watched him for a moment, not moving, then said, “you’re a terrible liar, Sam Ortez.”

And Locus couldn’t help but flinch at that, because it had been  _ years _ since he’d heard that name. And all of a sudden, someone he’d only just met, who he knew  _ nothing _ about, but clearly knew  _ everything _ about him, was saying it. He wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so he simply fixed Fox in a glare.

“Sorry, bad call?” Fox asked. “Noted. Wasn’t planning on using that name around here anyways. It’s a good name, but I can understand why you’d wanna keep it quiet.”

“It wasn’t a lie.”

“Sorry?”

“I wasn’t  _ lying _ ,” Locus said.

Fox gave him a half-grin. “I don’t know if you realize this, but you do this thing with your shoulders when you’re not telling the truth.”

Locus stared at her.  _ What? _

“Don’t worry, I don’t think most other people would notice it. I’m just...really good at reading body language, I guess?” Fox shrugged. “Point is, I’m here if you wanna talk about stuff. It could be anything. I know you’ve had it rough.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Locus insisted. He was fine. He was used to killing. Why wouldn’t he be fine?

“Suit yourself,” Fox said, somewhat unhappily. She was quiet for a moment, and Locus couldn’t help but feel a little grateful. Then she spoke up again, “so Wash has been keeping an eye on me. He’s not down here right now, thankfully. I think he knows it’s too open around here.”

Locus tilted his head slightly. “He’s tailing you? Why?”

“I’m guessing Kimball asked him to keep an eye on me to figure out whether or not pairing us together permanently is a good call or not,” Fox replied. “It’s what  _ I  _ would do.”

Locus narrowed his eyes, thinking hard. “What do you mean ‘pair us permanently?’” 

“Like…” Fox looked upwards thoughtfully, then back at him. “Like I guess some time out of this dungeon, for starters. I guess just walking around, tracking your progress as you figure stuff out for yourself?”

Huh. “When was this discussed?” Locus asked, crossing his arms.

“After you left Kimball’s office yesterday,” Fox replied. “It was a brief conversation, but the fact that Kimball came to  _ me _ with the idea is good news for you.”

_ You can use this. This is your way ou-- _ “It won’t work.”

Fox raised her eyebrows at him. “Why not?”

Locus looked away, trying to figure out how he wanted to arrange his thoughts into words. “You’re just going to wind up wasting your time,” he said bitterly. And a movement to his right made him look over, and Fox had a hand pressed against the glass wall of his cell and a firm expression on her face.

“You are  _ not _ a waste of time,” she said in a voice that was much, much harder than her previous tone. She let her words sink in for a moment before she pulled away and dropped her hand into her lap. “I  _ want _ to help you, okay? If I’m getting involved in this, it’s because it was  _ my _ choice,  _ not _ because Kimball asked me to.” She let out a long sigh and continued. “I know a lot of stuff doesn’t make sense right now, but I need you to hang on just a little longer, okay?” And now her voice was soft, like how she had spoken to him when they’d first met on Nalome. 

And Locus clenched his jaw because he didn’t like the way that tone made him want to trust her. She was hiding something. He  _ couldn’t _ trust her. But  _ god _ did he want to. She was the only person who’d made an actual  _ effort _ to get through to him. And he hated how that small display of empathy was all that it took. “I want updates,” he said finally, looking back at her. 

Fox nodded, an understanding look on her face. “I’ll let you know every time I hear something new. I promise.”

“And I want the truth,” he said, holding her gaze. “About you, and everything else.”

Fox sucked in a breath and let it out slowly. “In time,” she said. “I’m not ready yet. But in time, I’ll tell you what you need to know.” Then she looked over suddenly, and Locus did the same, wondering what she saw. “Sounds like those guards are off their break,” she said. Then she looked back at him and said, “I have some stuff I need to do, so I should probably head out.” She rose to her feet, helmet in her hands. 

Locus did the same, watching her carefully.

Fox met his gaze with a small smile, then gave him a nod and said, “I know it might not seem like it, but you can trust me.” Then she put her helmet back on and turned to go. “I’ll see you soon, okay?”

Locus watched her walk away in silence, head swarming with a thousand thoughts. Then he sighed and put his back to the glass wall of his cell. He had his helmet back on before the guards reached him.

 

* * *

 

“I  _ specifically _ asked you not to tell  _ anyone _ about what we discussed,” Kimball sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. After their discussion with the Reds and Blues,Wash and Carolina had made their way to Kimball’s office to tell her what had happened. It only seemed fair. 

Wash held firm, noticing Carolina looking at him strangely out of the corner of his eye. “They’re our  _ teammates. _ They deserve to know what’s going on.”

“And what will happen when one of them lets slip what you told them?” Kimball asked, pulling her hand away from her face and fixing Wash in a frustrated stare. “I asked you to keep this quiet for a  _ reason. _ ”

“There’s a very good chance that keeping this sort of information from them could have resulted in tension between all of us,” Carolina said suddenly. 

Kimball stared at Carolina, and Wash could have _ sworn  _ that her gaze softened ever so slightly when she did so. “I understand that, but this a very sensitive situation. There are a  _ lot _ of people who want Locus dead for what he did. If word gets out, something could  _ happen  _ to him. And if he’s ever going to  _ eventually _ testify for what he did, he needs to be  _ alive. _ ”

“There are guards posted outside of his cell, and Fox visits him pretty regularly. I don’t think that anyone would take the chance of hurting him...even  _ if _ they could get past the security,” Wash replied. 

The frustration on Kimball’s face faded to annoyed disappointment when she looked back at him. “That’s not the  _ point, _ ” she said bitterly. “The point is that I  _ trusted _ you with very important information, and you shared it, despite knowing just how sensitive it was.”

And out of the corner of Wash’s eye, he saw Carolina jerk her chin downwards, so slightly that he almost missed it. And though he didn’t know exactly what it meant, he knew it wasn’t anything good. “I understand that,” Wash said, looking back at Kimball. “But we did what was necessary for our team. Tensions are already high as it is, we can’t afford to drive wedges between ourselves and others.”

Kimball inhaled deeply, closing her eyes. “Just...did you explain to the Reds and Blues that what you told them wasn’t to be repeated?”

“We did,” Wash replied with a nod.

Kimball opened her eyes and looked over at Carolina, a new tiredness on her face. “Then there isn’t anything else we can do.” She sighed. “Continue tailing Fox and reporting back with what you know. And with any luck, we can keep all of this quiet until a decision is made.”

Wash couldn’t help but feel like he should say more, but he didn’t know what, so he held his tongue. 

“If that’s all, I want the two of you to return to what you were doing,” Kimball said rubbing one of her temples. “I have a meeting with Doctor Grey, so I’ll let you know when you can report in.”

Carolina let out a long sigh that drew Wash’s attention. “Understood.”

Wash watched her for a moment, then looked back at Kimball and said, “copy that.” Then he turned and headed for the exit, trying to figure out why he felt so wrong about doing what he knew had been right.

The next few days passed...stressfully. Wash found himself exceptionally busy between helping with repairs, assisting with patrols, and keeping an eye on Fox. The latter was consumed with helping Grey, and seemed to have found her place amongst Kimball’s men. It was good that she was staying out of trouble, as it gave him plenty of time to worry about the pirates that had escaped. So far, none of the patrols had come across them. But Wash couldn’t help but wonder when that would change. 

Despite the distraction of assisting Kimball and her men, Wash couldn’t find a way to stop his mind from replaying what had happened during the fight. The wounded soldier. The pelican. The pirate.  _ Locus. _

Wash knew he had changed, knew that the shred of humanity that had been in him prior to the fight at the Tower of The Purge had begun to take over. And it wasn’t like he had lied to any of his teammates. He really  _ did _ believe that Fox could help Locus. And he really did think that the two would work extremely well together. But the fact that the change in behavior had happened so rapidly, and had even caused Locus to  _ save _ him had thrown him through a loop that he couldn’t quite get out of. 

Despite clearly having some understanding of Locus’ background, Fox needed to know what she was getting into, and if anyone knew her whereabouts, it was Grey. He watched as the group of soldiers he had been with scattered to go fulfill their other duties out of the corner of his eye as he headed in the direction of the medbay. When he finally arrived, he asked the receptionist to let Doctor Grey know he was here to see her.

“Oh, she’s down in her lab,” the receptionist replied, chewing on a piece of gum and not looking up from whatever she was typing into her computer. “I’ll let her know you’re coming, but you’d better be careful before walking in.”

Wash nodded in acknowledgement and made his way towards the elevator at the end of the short hallway behind the reception desk. He didn’t need to hear it to know he was walking into a potential warzone. Doctor Grey had always been a fan of unorthodox experiments. He imagined it would only be worse now that she had a new playmate.

The first thing he heard when he stepped off the elevator was the sound of singing. Opera, to be exact. But what was strange was that it sounded like  _ two _ voices instead of one. With a sigh, Wash reached the door to the lab the voices were coming from and rapped his knuckles against the metal door. “Grey?”

The singing cut off abruptly, and a moment later, the door slid open to reveal Doctor Grey with a welding mask pushed up onto her dark curly hair and a blowtorch in her hand.

“Well  _ hello _ Wash! Isn’t this a  _ pleasant _ surprise!” Doctor Grey chimed. “What can I help you with? Broken bone? Bad mental place? Having some trouble getting over the guilt of telling your teammates about that little thing you and Kimball discussed?”

Wash flinched at that, wondering how in the world she knew about that, and was about to speak when he noticed Fox working at a table in the lab. Fox saw him too and gave him a cheery wave. “Hi Wash! Coming to keep tabs on me?”

Wash gave her a hesitant wave back, taken off guard both by the fact that she had apparently figured out that he was keeping an eye on her, and how  _ easy _ it had been to locate her. He had been expecting a wild goose chase, not a tea party. “I actually wanted to talk to Fox, if that’s alright,” he said to Grey.

Grey tilted her head to the side, despite the lack of a helmet to hide her curious expression. She pursed her red-painted lips and squinted at him, then her face broke into a grin and she stepped back away from the door. “Come in, come in!” she said, turning away with a wave of her free hand. She walked back towards the table she and Fox had apparently been working at. Wash took a moment to look over the boxes of metal parts and tools. 

“What are you two working on?” he asked, looking over at Fox as she screwed a panel onto some sort of metal tube with wires sticking out of one end.

“Prototyping,” Fox replied without looking up. Wash wondered how she managed to appear so comfortable with working on something seemingly so delicate in power armor. 

“See, after Doctor Rosenblum here did a  _ stellar _ job of fixing Matthews up, I wanted to brainstorm a little with her to create a more advanced prosthetic!” Grey elaborated.

“I’m sorry, Doctor...Rosenblum?” Wash looked over at Fox with confusion. 

Fox leaned back away from her work and turned her head towards him. “Annita Rosenblum. That’s the name you’ll actually  _ find _ in the UNSC registry if you’re looking me up,” she explained with a level of casualness in her voice that took Wash by surprise.

“Oh,” Wash said. He already knew that ‘Fox’ had been nothing more than a nickname after listening in on her conversation with Locus on the way back to Chorus. But it wasn’t until just now that he had realized he’d never actually learned her full name. Something about it made him feel oddly uncomfortable, like she had just told him a very personal secret. 

“You have  _ no _ idea how  _ excited _ I was when I realized who I was working with!” Grey squealed giddily. 

Under his helmet, Wash frowned. “Uh…” he looked over at Fox. “I’m sorry, are you...famous, or something?”

Fox shrugged. “I’m no celebrity, but I did publish a book on a study I conducted with my mentor about the benefits of introducing synthetic pain receptors to prosthetic limbs.”

“I had no  _ clue _ I she was one of Manning’s students! Imagine my surprise!” Grey said with a laugh.

“I’m sorry, I still don’t follow--”

“Doctor Howard Manning,” Grey cut him off, holding up a finger. “He’s responsible for a number of  _ groundbreaking _ discoveries that led to  _ massive _ improvements to prosthetic limbs! I had the honor of attending a lecture of his once! He’s the reason I was able to fix Simmons up when you all first arrived on Chorus!” Doctor Grey explained.

“Ah,” Wash said dismissively, then asked, “I’m sorry, did you say ‘pain receptors?’”

“Oh, yeah,” Fox said, holding up the tube she had been working on. Wash noticed that it tapered towards the end that didn’t have cables sticking out of it, and realized that it must be part of a synthetic forearm of some sort. “Manning’s signature design has pain receptors.”

_ “Why? _ ”

“Because pain is vital to knowing when your body is in trouble. It’s just a message that our brain sends to wherever we’re hurting that whatever we just did was bad and could possibly lead to very serious damage if we continue whatever we were doing beforehand,” Fox explained with a shrug as she placed the forearm back on the table. “The goal is to have this thing ready in case someone needs it. Grey  _ wanted _ to put it on Simmons, but…”

“But he said that he prefered his  _ current _ set-up,” Grey finished.

“Right,” Wash said, trying to sound interested. This wasn’t what he had come down to the lab for at all. At least neither of the two seemed to have anything else to add to their current conversation.

“So you said you wanted to talk to Fox. I’m guessing it’s not about what we’re currently working on, though. Am I right?” Grey asked suddenly, leaning against the table with one hand planted firmly on its surface and the other on her hip. 

And Wash felt heat rise into his face. He hadn’t meant to come off as rude. “Well, I just...wanted to make sure that she knew what she was getting into...with the thing Kimball mentioned,” he said, looking in Fox’s direction.

“Wash, I know he’s not exactly the citizen of the year, but he’s not going to be a problem,” Fox said, clearly knowing  _ exactly _ who he was referencing.

“I just want to make sure that you know the whole story, is all,” Wash said. “I  _ want _ to believe that he’s changed. I  _ do. _ And it’s hard to deny that he’s a different person after all that he’s done, but if you’re serious about this, you need to understand exactly what you’re dealing with.”

“What, that he’s a wannabe Darth Vader impressionist who never outgrew his emo phase?” Fox asked. Beside her, Grey let out a snort of laughter.

“Just…” Wash shook his head and waved dismissively. “He tends to latch onto people. And I want you to be aware of that, so you don’t wind up running into the same problem that I had with him.”

“Okay, noted,” Fox said. “Is it like...a projection sort of deal? Or is he just generally very clingy?”

“Both,” Wash found himself exchanging a startled look with Grey when she and him spoke at the same time. 

“Mostly for the sake of affirmation,” Grey continued. 

“So like...as in he was doing bad things and looked to someone else who also did bad things as a way of saying ‘hey, I’m not a horrible person!’ Right?” Fox clarified.

“Exactly like that,” Wash said, nodding. 

“Huh,” Fox said, looking at him for a moment. Then she shrugged and said, “well it’s a good thing I don’t plan on letting him be a terrible human being, then. That way we won’t have that problem!”

Wash let out a sigh. As much as he trusted that Fox would be able to handle Locus, he  _ did _ wish that she would take things just a bit more seriously. “I just wanted to warn you, so you’d know what you’re dealing with.”

“And I appreciate that,” Fox said with a nod. Then she added, “tell you what, I’ll have a chat with him about this later. Set some expectations, and the like. How does that sound?”

And Wash had to admit that the idea made him feel a whole lot better. “You should do that,” he said. 

“Then it’s a date!” Fox exclaimed. Then, in a much smoother tone, said, “don’t worry, Wash, I know what I’m doing. You can trust that I’m going to set things straight.”

And when she said it, a little more of his unease evaporated. He gave her a nod, and turned and exited the lab. It was time to report to Kimball. 

 

* * *

 

“You all good, Red?” 

Carolina looked over when she heard Sarge speak. The two of them had spent the majority of the day working on helping rebuild a part of the supports on one of the upper levels that had buckled during the fight. Now they were on a much-needed break, and apparently, the fact that she had zoned out a little bit while deep in thought had attracted Sarge’s attention. 

“I’m fine,” she replied, a bit too quickly.

“Y’ don’t look fine,” Sarge said back.

And Carolina just sighed, looking at the other soldiers who had gathered in a group nearby, sharing stories and snacks. “There’s a lot going on. I just haven’t had time to process all of it,” she admitted.

Sarge nodded sagely and stepped away from the forklift he had been leaning against and sat down next to Carolina with his back to the catwalk railing. “I see where yer comin’ from. It’s been nonstop around here.”

Carolina decided this didn’t warrant a reply, and chose silence. 

“How’d Kimball react to you tellin’ her about how you and Wash talked to us?”

Carolina closed her eyes under her helmet, greatly wishing that Sarge had asked anything  _ but _ that. “She wasn’t happy.”

“Well, didja apologize?”

Carolina looked over at Sarge. “I--” No. She hadn’t, she realized. “Should I have?”

“Well,” Sarge began, looking up at the ceiling, “the way I see it, y’ both did the wrong thing. Sure, she shoulda told us what was goin’ on too, but she also asked you and Wash to keep it a secret. The way it was set up, no one was gonna win. But I’d think an apology would at least  _ help. _ ”

Carolina stared at him strangely. It was rare for Sarge to give any comprehensible advice,  _ especially _ to her. In fact, she couldn’t recall a time when the two of them had such a down-to-earth conversation one-on-one like this before. It left her temporarily speechless. 

“Besides,” Sarge continued, “Kimball’s had it rough. She’s one hell of a tough lady, but I doubt she started out that way. Point is,” he said, looking over at her, “you and I know firsthand what she’s been dealin’ with. You as a product of Project Freelancer, me as an old, worn-out Helljumper. But I don’t know her as well as you do. Yer her friend, and she needs ya, so you should talk to her.”

Carolina stared at the grated floor of the catwalk she was seated on. Sarge had a surprisingly good point. “I’ll...see what I can do.” She looked over at Sarge, “thank you.”

“Heh, don’t mention it, Red,” Sarge chuckled. Then he rose to his feet with a groan, pressing a hand against his lower back as he stood up straight. “Now I’m gonna get these good-fer-nothin’ wannabe Grif’s back to work on these supports,” he said, jerking a thumb in the direction of the soldiers who they’d been working alongside who had  _ very _ obviously gotten too settled during their five-minute break. “We’ve got it under control, so why don’t ya go find Kimball?”

Carolina stood and gave him a nod, grateful for the chance to set things right. “I’ll come right back when I’m finished,” she promised, turning and starting towards the stairs. 

“Don’t bother! We’ll be done by then!” Sarge called back good-naturedly.

Carolina couldn’t help but chuckle at Sarge’s enthusiasm, then headed for Kimball’s office.

When she arrived, she found herself stuck outside, staring at the doors, unable to force herself to go any further. In retrospect, she probably should have thought about what she was going to  _ say _ . But these sorts of things had  _ never _ been easy for her. Offering encouragement and support? Easy. She’d done it a million times during Project Freelancer, and a million times more after meeting the Reds and Blues. But talking about feelings? That had always been a no-go up until very, very recently. And it was still hard. She had gotten so used to putting how she felt second to her success that it had taken  _ years _ for her to relearn how to, as Grif put it, “begin to function like a normal fucking human being.” 

And now she was shoved into the spotlight on an unfamiliar stage. But it wasn’t the first time, right? She’d tackled bigger things than this before, right? And Kimball was her friend, so it wasn’t like she was getting judged for anything,  _ right? _

_ Okay, ‘Lina, you’ve got this. Just go in there, say you’re sorry, listen to what she has to say, then go back and help Sarge before he drops a support beam on himself. Observe, analyze, execute.  _ Carolina squared her shoulders in a show of confidence, then radioed Kimball. “General Kimball, this is Carolina, do you have a moment?”

“I was beginning to wonder if you were just going to stand there outside of my office, without coming in,” came the reply. Then, “I have a few minutes.”

Carolina felt the heat rise to her face.  _ Right. She has a camera outside of her office. You knew that. You’re fine. Just walk in. _ Carolina sucked in a deep breath, let it out slowly, then stepped through the automatic doors. 

“You were out there for a while,” Kimball said when she walked in. 

Carolina stopped in front of her desk. “I was…”  _ trying to think of how the heck I’m going to word what I want to say next? Nope. You blew that one, Carolina.  _ Realizing she had literally no good excuse, she just fell into an uncomfortable silence. 

Kimball gave her a half-smile, then looked back at her monitor, then sighed, and minimized the window that was pulled up on it, returning her attention to Carolina. 

And for that whole two seconds, Carolina tried to figure out what it was about her that had changed. Then it hit her like a stop sign to the face during a category four hurricane. “You changed your hair,” she said lamely.

“I  _ did, _ ” Kimball said. “It’s too much work to keep it straight, and since it doesn’t look like this war is as over as we thought it was, I figured it would be easier not to fuss with it and just keep it natural.”

Carolina felt a twinge of pain in her chest from how she said that. “It looks good,” she said without thinking, and the surprised look Kimball gave her made her wonder how unused she was to receiving actual compliments. 

“Well, I appreciate it, but I doubt that’s why you’re here,” Kimball replied. “Is something wrong?”

“No, I just--” Carolina broke off, thinking hard about how she wanted to approach this. “It’s about what happened three days ago.”

Kimball sat back in her chair and looked up at her, a thoughtful expression on her face. “What’s done is done, Carolina. I’m not happy with what you and Wash did, but I do understand your reasoning for it.”

“Well that’s-- We shouldn’t have,” Carolina said. “I mean, we shouldn’t have kept it from our team, but we also should have talked to you about it first. The execution wasn’t as clean as it should have been--”

“Carolina, I’m not angry at either of you,” Kimball interrupted. 

Carolina took in a deep breath. “I just...know that...you’ve been having a hard time trusting people after what happened with Felix.”

And for a moment, something dark flickered across Kimball’s face. She turned away, the start of a snarl separating her lips and drawing her eyebrows downward. And then suddenly, the expression was gone, replaced by one of world-weary exhaustion. “What gave it away?” she asked. 

And Carolina wasn’t sure how to put it into words, all the observations that she’d made, all the little things she had picked up on. So instead she simply said, “you’ve been different since then.”

“You hardly knew me beforehand,” Kimball replied with a defensive note in her voice.

“No, but I knew the sort of person that you were,” Carolina replied. She looked away and was silent for a while after that, before finally sighing and pulling off her helmet, figuring now was as good a time as any to be absolutely dead honest. “I didn’t trust Fox either,” she admitted. “And I still don’t...not fully, anyways. But I want to believe that she’s trying to help us,” she said, looking back at Kimball. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with your judgement. And I’m sorry that Felix made you doubt yourself, and if Wash and I made you question your trust after what we did.”

And Kimball was silent for a very long time, looking like she was trying to think of what she wanted to say. “It’s like I said,” she began, “I’m not mad at you or Wash.” She closed her eyes and brushed one of her curls out of her face. “I just can’t help but wonder what it would have been like if--” Her voice caught in her throat and she looked away. “We all thought this was over when Epsilon sent that broadcast. I let my guard down. And then a weapons system on one of the  _ moons _ \-- of all places --comes online. And then Fox and Locus and the space pirates...It doesn’t seem like it’s ever going to end.”

“You can’t give up,” Carolina said.

“And I’m not!” Kimball exclaimed. “But this whole thing-- If I had just  _ seen _ what Felix  _ was _ .”

“You never could have known,” Carolina said, stepping forward and putting a hand on Kimball’s desk. “It wasn’t your fault. You can’t blame yourself for that.”

Kimball let out a humorless laugh. “Can’t I? I sacrificed  _ hundreds _ of men...and for  _ what? _ A war that had absolutely no meaning, and was nothing more than a way for Hargrove to commit planetary genocide?!”

Carolina looked away, thinking hard, trying to come up with a way to piece some of Kimball’s faith back together again. “We can’t change what happened,” she said slowly. “There...there have been plenty of times where I wished I could turn back time. I know what it’s like. And I know that there’s no good reason for any of what happened. But I also know that we’re still here, and that we know more than we did before, and that neither of us are ready to give up, no matter how tired we are.” She looked back at Kimball and noticed that she was staring at her with what could have been a spark forming in her eyes. And so she continued. “I know it’s been too long. And I know I haven’t seen all the things you saw when this war first started, but I also know that we’re  _ both _ going to see the end of it. Because we’ve lasted this long, and I can’t see a reason why we don’t deserve to make it to the finish.”

And now there was  _ definitely _ a spark in Kimball’s eyes. But there was something else in there too, and Carolina realized with a twinge of guilt that she was holding back tears. And she watched as Kimball wordlessly stood and walked around to the front of the desk and stopped in front of her, let out a sigh, and-- to Carolina’s shock --pulled her into a hug. 

Carolina, not knowing what to do, just stood there. 

“Thanks,” Kimball said, pulling back, and she looked a little less like she was about to start crying, and had a small smile on her face.

_ Mission success? _ Carolina thought, returning the smile. She then reached out and put her hand on Kimball’s shoulder and took in a breath to speak, but then looked over when she heard the office doors slid open.

“Uh. I can come back,” Wash said awkwardly, already backing up.

Carolina dropped her hand, and Kimball stepped back, swiping a wrist across her eyes. “No, Wash, it’s fine,” she said. “I’m guessing you have a report for me?”

“Yeah. Also Fox apparently picked up on the fact that Carolina and I have been watching her,” Wash replied, approaching them and hesitantly stopping short of the two women. 

“She said specifically that she knew  _ I _ was watching her?” Carolina asked dubiously.

Wash was silent for a moment, then let out a quiet, “oh.” Then, “I just talked to her. Discussed what she was getting into. And I really do think that she can handle this.”

Kimball nodded, leaning back against her desk. “I agree,” she said. “Based on the reports you two have been giving me, it’s fair to say that pairing her and Locus together is a good call.”

And Carolina noticed the way that Wash tilted his head slightly at that, and she saw it too-- the way that Kimball held herself with more confidence than either of them had seen in her all week. It brought a small smile to her face. “So what’s the next move?” she asked.

Kimball looked over at her, then to Wash. “Well, I think the only thing left  _ to _ do is get Fox in here and give her the news. So who wants to go get her?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALL ABOARD THE PAIN TRAIN MOTHERFUCKERS CHOO CHOO  
> Carolina used Super Anime Motivational Speech! It’s Super Effective!  
> I feel like Kimball is just a touch more huggy than Carolina, who has received a grand total of probably 10 hugs during her lifetime because her dad was a TOOL, but also they both need a hug. Let me have this.  
> Also you can’t tell me Felix didn’t give her trust issues. Homeboy was an absolute trash can.   
> Wash is an awkward baby and I would die for him.
> 
> Fun fact! I re-wrote this ENTIRE CHAPTER! Fun fact! I DON'T EVEN LIKE IT THAT MUCH.  
> To make art is to fucking suffer, kids. 
> 
> I'm not sure if it was just a fever dream but I swear to god I saw a post on tumblr about what Tucker and Wash discussed on that cliff. AND I DON'T KNOW IF IT'S REAL OR IF I JUST DREAMED IT UP BC SOMETIMES I LITERALLY DREAM THAT I'M ON TUMBLR??? If it is a real post and one of you lovely folks knows where to find it, PLEASE let me know so I can at least link back to it. I'd hate to be an accidental jerk.
> 
> I should probably mention that there’s a reason why I’ve only written Fox’s POV three times in this entire fic. The answer is that she knows way too much. Seriously. It’s lowkey very difficult to write her perspective BECAUSE SHE WANTS TO GIVE EVERYTHING AWAY.
> 
> Tucker you are not smooth. At all. We all know what you’re doing you mint chip ice cream punk.   
> Excep Wash.  
> He’s oblivious.   
> They’ll be the death of me, I swear.
> 
> Epsilon/Church was a jackass. But he was the Red’s and Blue’s jackass. You will never convince me that Grif doesn’t at least feel a little sorry about him.
> 
> VOLLEYBALLVOLLEYBALLVOLLEYBALLVOLLEYBALLVOLLEYBALLVOLLEYBALLVOLLEYBALLVOLLEYBALL  
> Hi I'm whiter than a jar of mayonnaise and my Spanish sucks so I was forced to use Spanish Dictionary and I hope I didn’t fuck up too bad. Here’s what Lopez is HOPEFULLY saying:  
> 1) He’s probably being lazy.  
> 2) I’m not his babysitter. I don’t know.  
> 3) I saw him over there.  
> 4) I hate you.  
> If I fucked any of these up PLEASE LET ME KNOW. Like I said, my Spanish sucks. I only know like, level 2 high school Spanish. AKA nothing. h e l p
> 
> Fox: *says something nice*  
> Locus: ABORT MISSION HOP ON THE NOPE TRAIN TO FUCK-THAT-VILLE MY TRAINING DIDN’T COVER THIS
> 
> HMMMMMMM FOX. HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. YA DON'T SEEM THAT TRUSTWORTHY, FOXY BOX.


	13. Methodology

Kimball exhaled slowly, eyes scanning over the three Marines in front of her. Wash had gone and retrieved Fox for her, and now it was time for business. She looked at each of them before starting, “Fox, these past few days, I’ve had Agents Washington and Carolina keep an eye on you. Their assessments of your activity helped me get a better understanding of your capabilities,” she explained. “But my final decision rests on you. I understand that you have been in a leadership position before, and the interactions the three of us have had the chance to observe between you and Locus make me think that pairing the two of you together could be beneficial.”

As Kimball spoke, she noted how Fox’s demeanor became more confident. Whenever they talked, Fox always stood up straight with her head held high, but now her shoulders seemed more relaxed, and she shifted her weight slightly to one side. “But,” Kimball said, noticing how Fox tilted her head ever so slightly at the word, “I need you to understand that no matter what decision we make today, he’s still a prisoner.”

“Noted,” Fox said with a nod.

“You mentioned, when we first discussed this, the idea of adding some slack to his leash. I’ve put some thought into this over the past few days,” Kimball explained. “There’s a lot of work to be done in the aftermath of the pirate attack a few days ago.”

“So...wait a minute,” Fox said holding up a hand. “Am I just...like a parole officer in all of this? Like are you telling me he’s getting community service?”

“I’m asking you to work with him,” Kimball said, mildly annoyed by Fox’s tone. “I’m not sure what sort of freedom you had in mind, but you need to understand that what he did puts him in a position where he deserves very little of it.”

Fox shuffled her feet and turned her head away for a moment before looking right back at Kimball. “I think, after how he helped during the fight, that he deserves just a little more trust. _Not a lot!_ But just enough to say ‘hey, this was a good thing! Keep doing it!’ Like training a dog.”

“And?” Kimball asked, having a creeping suspicion that there was more to it than that.

“And...I think that as he progresses-- which he _will!_ He’s not going to stay the way he is right now forever. It’s pretty clear to me that he doesn’t want to, anyways. But, so say we have him help fix up some of the damage, there’s gotta be a clear reward system in place,” Fox elaborated. “I mean, you’re smart, you probably know this,” she said, waving a hand in Kimball’s direction.

“What did you have in mind?” Kimball asked, interested. Even if Fox’s idea was completely outrageous, hearing what she had to say would at least help get a better image of the sort of person she was.

“I’m thinking of something like an eye for an eye kind of deal,” Fox said. “Charon isn’t done with us. They’ve made that very clear. And homeboy killed a _lot_ of people and wrecked a _lot_ of shit. But he also knows Charon pretty well. The way I see it, it would be useful to stick him on the frontlines and try to at least clean up the mess that he made. ”

“Which is precisely what I was implying earlier,” Kimball said with slight relief. At least they were on the same page.

“Yeah, but what I’m hoping for is that with every good thing he does, he gets a bit more freedom. I’d like him to eventually be out of that cell for good.”

Kimball stared. Then she looked over at Wash and Carolina to make sure that they’d heard the same thing. “What you’re asking for is a level of trust I’m not ready to give him,” she said, turning back to Fox.

“Which is why we build up to it,” Fox replied. “It’s not going to be a right-away sort of thing! But keeping him in isolation in a cell somewhere _won’t_ help him improve. At all. And if what Stripes told me about him is true, he _needs_ to be around people if he’s going to get better. We could do it like...like he gets three hours with me during week one, then based on his improvement it could move up to six hours, then twelve, then whatever.”

“Let me ask you something before I say anything else,” Kimball said, leaning forward and planting both hands on her desk. “What do you see when you look at him?”

Fox fell silent for a moment, pondering the question. Then, much to Kimball’s surprise, replied, “myself.”

Kimball stared at her, and out of the corner of her eye she could see Wash and Carolina doing the same. “Explain,” she said when she finally found her tongue.

“Him and I went through the same stuff. The Great War sucked, and I’d be a liar if I said the way I coped with the shit I went through was completely healthy. But I learned how to deal with it. It took time. It wasn’t fun. But I did it,” Fox replied, centering her weight and standing up tall. “When I look at him, I see the person I was before I figured out how to live with everything I’ve been through. And that person was really fucked up-- kinda like him, y’know? And so I’m thinking that maybe...if I could put myself back together again after what happened, then maybe I can give him a push in the right direction to do the same. Which is why, above all else, I wanna work with him; because I can help.”

Kimball stared at Fox, thinking hard about what she said. In the late hours of the night after Hargrove had fled, in a low voice masked to any who may have been listening in by a symphony of rain and thunder echoing through the surrounding jungle, Wash had spoken to her about the mental state Locus had been in prior to Felix’s death. She still remembered the bitter taste in her mouth when she realized the war he had started was nothing more than a twisted _coping method_ to him, and that her men had died because he simply couldn’t deal with what he had been through. And how she had rounded on Wash, in anger, because _he of all people_ shouldn’t feel _sorry_ for him-- _just_ _look what he’s done!_ And Wash had told her about Project Freelancer, and his time as Recovery One, and the Meta, and she _knew_ that he had a point, just as he knew that what Locus had gone through wasn’t an excuse. And when she looked at Fox now, she was back in her office on that late, humid night with a bottle of whiskey on her desk and an indignant fire burning in her belly. But there was worry that brought the taste of acid onto her tongue too, because she knew how much her men counted on her to see them through and keep them as safe as they could be. And so, with a waver in her voice, she said, “I _never_ want him to hurt any of us again. Understand? _Never._ ”

Fox nodded silently, and when Kimball was sure she had nothing to say, continued, “you understand this means he gets one chance. _One._ He blows it, and it’s over. And if he fights, you or one of them,” she nodded at Wash and Carolina, “puts him down.”

“I understand,” Fox said.

Kimball fixed her in a hard stare, wanting to be sure. _Needing_ to be. And when Fox followed up with a confident nod, and said “I promise I won’t let you down,” she believed her.

“Good,” Kimball said with a sigh, standing up straight. She was quiet for a moment as she collected herself. And when she was sure that she could speak in an even tone again, said “I want a schedule for what you have planned with him for the rest of the week on my desk at the end of the day for me to approve. You are to file a report at the end of every day tracking his progress. If you’re occupying the same space as anyone else, especially the Reds and Blues, you are to keep a reasonable distance between the two of you and them. He is not to be armed under any circumstance unless you and I discuss it prior, and if I decide to allow it, you will be accompanied by either Wash or Carolina for the duration. He does not _leave_ headquarters under any circumstance without my approval, and will do so under strict supervision and escort. And he’s only to be out of his cell during the day. Failure to comply with _any_ of these rules will result in immediate termination of your contact with him, understand?”

Fox nodded. “Yes ma’am.”

“Good,” Kimball said, straightening out some of the paperwork on her desk before looking back up at her. “You’re to begin working with him effective tomorrow. For now, I want you working on that schedule.” She paused, giving Fox a chance to ask any questions she might have had. When the latter said nothing, she concluded, “I’m putting a lot of responsibility and risk on your shoulders, Fox, because I believe you’re capable of handling it. Prove me right.”

 

 

* * *

 

“ _What?_ ” Locus stopped in the middle of the walkway and looked at Fox in disbelief.

When she had fetched him from his cell earlier, he had been expecting the reasoning to be similar to what it was last time; though he had thought it odd that there were no alarms this time. So when she told him that it was because Kimball had agreed to what she had proposed days ago, it caught him completely off guard.

“Your ears broken?” Fox asked, looking over her shoulder, but not stopping.

He stared after her for a moment, before picking up his pace to catch up with her.

“You have a lot of questions, I can tell,” Fox stated, leading him out of the cell block.

Locus followed her hesitantly. Unlike before, the halls were occupied with Kimball’s men. He didn’t need to think hard to imagine what would happen if he were noticed tailing Fox around headquarters.

“Well, _come_ on!” Fox said, turning back and putting her hands on her hips. When he did nothing, she seemed to realize what he was thinking and added, “don’t worry. Everybody already knows that you’re out with me. Kimball made an announcement about it.”

Somehow that didn’t make Locus feel any better. He followed closely behind Fox when she started walking again, aware of the eyes of Kimball’s soldiers on him as he walked past.

Fox led him down to the sublevel floor where Doctor Grey’s labs were, and scanned them through into the one at the end of the hall.

“Alright,” Fox said as she stepped through, “here we are.”

The lab was empty, which surprised Locus a bit considering how much work still needed to be done after the recent attack from the space pirates. He had expected to see at least a _few_ of Grey’s medics sharing the space with them.

As they walked past the shelves and workbenches, Locus looked around to try to get an idea of what the space was being used for. There were odd pieces of machinery strewn across several of the tables, but nothing that really gave any clues as to what Grey was working on.

“Biotics upgrades.”

Locus looked over when he heard Fox speak, and saw that she was walking backwards, facing him.

“Since I helped with Matthews, Grey wanted me to work with her to make biotics out of sturdier stuff,” Fox explained. Then she turned back around, gesturing with her hand for him to follow her around a corner.

A large corner of the lab had been cleared; workbenches and boxes and shelving units all shoved against the walls, leaving an open space. On top of a wooden crate was a laptop with a blueprint that looked very similar to the shield Fox used as a weapon.

Locus watched her walk over to it, keeping his distance, still unsure of exactly why he had been brought here. He looked on as she pulled the shield base off of her hip and tossed it into the air without looking at it. However, instead of hitting the ground like Locus had anticipated, it hovered.

 _Strange,_ he thought. Fox stepped away from it and picked up the laptop and carried it over to a workbench, and Locus took the time to get closer to the floating shield base and walk around it. It was certainly an impressive piece of craftsmanship, even he couldn’t deny that. He’d never seen anything quite like it before.

“Cool, huh?”

Locus looked over when Fox spoke, and quickly stepped away from the shield base.

“Hey, no need to be shy. It’s all cool,” Fox said, holding up a hand. “Honestly, when I got it to work for the first time, I stared at the thing for hours, so I can’t really judge.”

Locus stared at her for a moment, then glanced back at the shield base. “Why are we here?” he asked. Out of all the questions he had, that was the most important one.

“In this room? Or just in general?” Fox asked back, placing a hand down on the workbench next to the laptop.

Locus glared at her.

“Wow, okay, _someone_ woke up on the wrong side of the bed,” Fox said. Then, “we’re here because I have work to do, and I figured that at the very least, I could take you out for a change of scenery. And, y’know, we could talk about shit. Or whatever. I don’t know, I’m just playing it by ear, honestly,” she admitted.

Well that was...annoying. Locus had been expecting something a little more... _more_ . While he certainly appreciated not being stuck in a cramped cell with overhead lighting that was a just a tad too bright, he would have liked to have had something to _do_. With a sigh, he looked back at the shield base, startling slightly when Fox walked past him, as he hadn’t heard her move.

“I was planning on adjusting the energy output on this thing a bit to see if I could get it to make sharper turns,” Fox said, extending an open hand underneath the shield base, which dropped neatly into it.

Locus watched as she flexed her hand and the ring around the base extruded, and took a step back as Fox flung it loosely in front of her. The shield flew the length of the small open space she had created, then arced back towards her, and she caught it with ease.

“Does it respond to your implants?” Locus asked, boredom finally getting the best of him. If they weren’t going to _do_ anything, then he might as well at least _learn_ about the person he was apparently now stuck with.

“Yup!” Fox replied, running her finger across the edge of the shield

Locus noticed upon further examination that it’s edge wasn’t at all tapered into a blade like he had initially thought, but was in fact, rather blunt. And all around it were small panels that looked as though they could extrude. He remembered the plasma energy that had appeared around the shield, and wondered if the panels were the emitters. “And you built it?” he asked.

“That I did,” Fox replied, nodding at him. “She’s made mostly from old Pelican and ‘Hog parts...and a Roomba.”

Locus stared at her. “A vacuum?”

Fox shrugged. “That’s where the motion sensor in it came from, anyways.”

That was...interesting...Locus supposed. It was certainly resourceful, at the very least. But it also raised far more questions than he had before. He had been expecting some amount of alien technology to be involved as well, considering how it operated, and the plasma energy it emitted during the fight against the space pirates. Thinking hard, he crossed his arms and tilted his head at the shield. “You achieved this without the use of alien technology?”

“Oh, no, that’s what the core is made of,” Fox replied, tapping a finger against the spherical base, before tilting the shield sideways and holding it towards him. “I took it out of a weapon I found in some alien ruins on Nalome. It looked like they had some kind of outpost up there too.”

Locus peered at it, and realized that the base had separated into two parts, and hovered a little more than an inch away from each other, emitting a dull blue glow. _That_ was interesting. He found himself wondering what the chairman would do if he had access to this kind of technology, and it made his stomach twist. “So it’s an energy relay,” he said slowly, forcing an even tone.

  “Bingo!” Fox exclaimed, putting her free hand on her hip. “The core is a fixed point. The ring is magnetized around it, and the energy relay emitted from the core keeps it from being knocked off completely in a fight.”

Locus listened, interested. Combining an energy source with a weapon wasn’t exactly new technology, but the way Fox had done it was something he had never seen before. He watched as she set the shield down on the workbench next to her laptop and hooked the base up to one of its USB ports.

“Y’know, maybe if I can get permission from Kimball, I can calibrate it to your implants too. Mostly just for shits and giggles to see if I can get it to work with two people. But after the last two fights we’ve been in, I think you’d benefit a little from stronger defense.” She looked over at him. “Not to say that you’re not a good fighter or anything, just that you’ve gotten really banged up these past few days, and I kind of like you a little better alive.”

Locus couldn’t tell if she was trying to insult him or not. He watched her work for a little bit, taking in everything that came up on her laptop’s screen. He couldn’t make sense of most of it; the technology was simply too foreign to him, but he tried to absorb what he could. He did this for about a minute before his mind started to wander. He still had a lot of questions, and very few answers, and Fox was hiding something, and the longer he thought about it, the less he liked it. He figured he’d start with the most immediate one. “What are the terms of this arrangement?” Kimball _had_ to have set boundaries if she’d agreed to this, but so far, Fox hadn’t mentioned any of them.

“Basically, you and me need to stick together like glue. We get three hours together, and you can’t leave headquarters or be armed unless Wash or Lina-bean is babysitting us. We also have to keep our distance from everyone else. For liability or something. I don’t know,” Fox said, waving a hand dismissively.

So basically, he was stuck inside, with only Fox to keep him company. “What is the point of any of this?” he asked. He would be getting the same level of interaction if he had been left inside of his cell. None of this made any sense to him.

“To keep you from being in total isolation,” Fox replied, looking back at him. “Believe me, I’ve _been_ there, and I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t a _little_ cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs after it was all said and done.”

“I couldn’t tell,” Locus _almost_ said. But instead, he opted for a less inflammatory “it won’t make a difference.”

“Well _sure_ it will!” Fox said. “I mean, just look at you. You’re _already_ more talkative than you are when you’re all cooped up.”

Locus fell silent for a moment, mostly out of surprise. _Was_ he more talkative? He really hadn’t noticed.

“So,” Fox said, causing him to look over at her, “what do _you_ wanna do today?”

Locus blinked. Was she really asking him what he wanted? Would it even matter what sort of answer he gave? It wasn’t like he had free range of headquarters. And it wasn’t like he could do whatever he wanted. “You said you had work to do,” he replied.

Fox shrugged. “Yeah, and I do, but depending on what you want, I might be able to multitask a little. This time is really meant for you.”

“I’m fine right here,” Locus said, deciding that there weren’t really any other _interesting_ options. Especially since he wasn’t allowed to be armed.

“Suit yourself,” Fox said, stepping away from her laptop. “Anything you wanna _talk_ about?”

 _That_ was a trap. “No,” Locus said, a hint of a growl edging into his voice.

“Well, okay then, no need to get all prickly. It was _just_ a question,” Fox said, putting her hands up defensively.

Locus watched as she turned away and walked over to one of the counters and pulled a tool box off of it. She returned to her laptop and set it down next to her shield. Locus wondered if there was any way they could end this...session...early.

“Wanna know how I got that bigass scar on my face?” Fox asked suddenly.

Locus had a feeling she was going to tell him regardless of the answer he gave.

“Back in New Mombasa, my visor got shattered, so obviously I ditched the helmet entirely, because it was useless anyways,” Fox continued. And Locus listened with a slight sinking feeling, because _everyone_ knew what had happened to New Mombasa. “Then there was an explosion. Next thing I know, I've got a gash across my face, and I can't see out of one eye.” Fox paused and unhooked her shield from her laptop, then made a motion with her hand that caused the base to split apart. “I grabbed this helmet off some poor sap who'd bit it. Went blind shortly after due to head trauma. Ludwell found me and dragged me back for the evac. It was _not_ a fun day.”

Ludwell was the...corpse he had fought on Nalome, Locus remembered. He hadn't known that he had been with Fox since the Great War. He wondered how she had managed to keep her composure so well back on the moon after their encounter. He thought about this for a moment, looking away from her at their surroundings. The fact that Fox was opening up to him meant he was one step closer to figuring out what she was hiding. Better to remain cordial so that she wouldn't shut him off.

“How long did you serve?” He asked, looking back at Fox, who was occupied with adjusting something in the shield base.

“Well, I joined a year after college, so…” Fox stopped what she was doing and turned her head upward in thought. “I'd say about five years?” She said, looking back at him. “What about you?”

“Shouldn't you already know?” Locus asked. It _had_ to be in his file.

“I'm just trying to make conversation,” Fox said with a shrug. She turned back to her shield and toyed with it for a few more minutes before picking it up and turning away from the workbench, extending the shield’s outer ring. “That should do it,” she declared. She glanced over at him and said, “you might wanna back up a bit.”

Locus heeded her advice, stepping behind her, out of her way. He watched as she stepped up and hurled the shield forward, and followed it with his eyes as it flew the length of the lab, then took a sharp turn, and looped back to Fox.

“Perfect,” she said, catching it and retracting its blade before holstering it. Then she looked over at him. “So that sword of yours, that's alien tech, right?”

“Yes,” Locus replied.

“Tucker has the same one. You guys get them from the same place?”

“To my knowledge, Captain Tucker was already in possession of his when he arrived on Chorus.” Locus paused, wondering what had drawn her interest. “Why?”

“Hmm?”

“Why do you want to know?”

Fox shrugged, and shifted her weight to one leg. “I was just wondering. You get yours from here?”

Now Locus was _definitely_ suspicious. “Yes,” he said slowly, watching her carefully.

“Do you know if there are others where you got yours?”

And _that_ sent alarm bells off in Locus’ head. “What are you trying to gain?” he asked, bristling slightly.

“Easy, big guy, I'm just trying to figure out if there are extras laying around so I can study them,” Fox replied.

“Doctor Grey has undoubtedly already conducted a study,” Locus said, relaxing a little.

“I'm sure she has,” Fox agreed, “but I wanna see if I can _replicate_ the energy.”

And Locus gave her an odd look. “For what purpose?” He asked.

“Alien tech is hard to obtain,” Fox said simply. “But if we can make a similar energy to what's found in those swords, then it could help us in further technological advancements that might prove useful against Charon. Plus, _ShowStopper_ won't last forever. She's tough, but her energy relay isn't entirely self-sustainable. It'll burn out eventually. Probably,” Fox explained.

So she didn't have some hidden intentions. Huh. Locus couldn't help but feel a little guilty. She was only trying to help, and he was expecting danger around every corner. And he wondered if maybe it was her charisma, or the way that she held herself, or the way that she spoke that kept pulling him back to the past. To _Felix._ And he took a deep breath, angry at himself for even making the comparison.

“You good?”

Locus looked over when Fox spoke, and realized that he must have made his thoughts apparent through how he held himself. Frustrated, he replied, “I'm fine.”

Fox seemed to scrutinize him, then said, “how about we go for a walk? I can radio the Freelancer dynamic duo and see if one of them can come with us outside. How does that sound?”

Locus thought about this for a moment. Down in the labs, he didn’t need to worry about tip-toeing around any of Kimball’s men. But there also wasn’t much to do, and he was beginning to get antsy. He still had a lot of questions, but they obviously weren’t going to be answered right now. So if he had to choose between a change of scenery, and sitting and listening to Fox’s attempts at small-talk, he found the former far more appealing. With a sigh, he said, “fine.”

Fox gave him a nod, then turned and sent out a quick transition over comms. She was quiet for a moment, then looked back at him and said, “we’re good to go! Carolina just got back from patrol. She agreed to walk with us.” She walked over to the workbench and closed her laptop, then turned and headed back towards the lab entrance. “Come on,” she said over her shoulder as she brushed past him. “Lina-bean’s got a tight schedule. We shouldn’t keep her waiting.”

Locus stared after her for a moment, then stole a quick glance around the room, sighed again, then followed.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“So?”

“So…?”

“ _So_ , you heard the announcement. We both know what’s up. How are you doing?” Tucker asked, looking over at Wash.

Wash looked away from him, back towards the treeline. “I’m fine, Tucker.”

“Okay,” Tucker replied. “Good.” He was silent for a while, following Wash’s gaze, tapping his fingers against the side of the gun he held loosely in his hands.

After a moment, he drew in a breath to say something else, but Wash beat him to it, asking, “what about you?”

Tucker blinked under his helmet. “Uh. I’m good. Why?”

Wash looked over at him, and Tucker could _feel_ the skeptical look on his face. “You’ve been acting different lately.”

Tucker stared at him for a moment. “What? No I haven’t!”

“Tucker, you sat in a _waiting room_ until I was done getting stitches for a minor cut.”

Tucker felt the heat rise into his face. “So? I had to make sure you weren’t gonna do anything stupid. Do you have _any_ idea what Carolina would do to me and Caboose if something bad happened to you?”

Wash tilted his head slightly-- a motion Tucker couldn’t quite read. “You know she’s not like that,” he said.

“Dude, she’s like your big sister. She would _definitely_ fuck me up if I let something happen to you,” Tucker said.

Wash just sighed and shook his head, apparently not in the mood to argue. “You don’t have to worry about me,” he said after a long silence.

Tucker frowned and looked back at him. “Like _fuck_ I don’t!” he said. “You’re a part of our team, Wash.”

“Tucker, _nothing_ is going to happen,” Wash said, meeting Tucker’s gaze.

Tucker drew himself up to argue, then thought better of it and turned away.

“That’s what you’re worried about, isn’t it?”

Under his helmet, Tucker bit his lip. He looked back at Wash. “I...Yeah? Kinda? Like I know I said I was on board with this whole thing, but…”

“It will be okay, Tucker,” Wash said in a voice that was both gentle and firm.

Tucker wanted to believe him. But he also didn’t want to go through what had happened with Church again. He’d already lost one friend. And while there were plenty of measures in place to make sure Locus was no longer a threat, that fear still lingered in the pit of his stomach. He thought about voicing this, and was about to do so when Wash turned away from him with two fingers pressed to the side of his helmet.

Wash was silent for a moment, then looked back at Tucker and said, “that was Fox. She wants to take Locus out for some fresh air.” He was silent for a moment, then added, “Carolina’s taking care of it.”

And Tucker couldn’t help but feel a little relieved at that. “Cool, great,” he replied.

“Was there something you wanted to say?” Wash asked.

Tucker blinked, then shook his head. “It wasn’t important,” he sighed.

Wash watched him for a moment, then said, “well, our patrol’s over. Let’s head back.” Then he turned and started back through the valley, towards headquarters.

Tucker stared after him for a moment, then collected himself and followed.

When they got back to headquarters, Wash suggested that they grab lunch, but Tucker couldn’t find his appetite. Anxiety had put him in a chokehold and had been holding him in it all day. And after his last conversation with Wash, it wasn’t getting any better. He instead opted for some time alone, and headed for the nearest elevator after turning in his weapon at the armory.

He got in and hit the button that would take him to the floor the training room was on. Maybe practicing with his sword would clear his head a little bit. He watched as the doors closed, and leaned back against the elevator wall and closed his eyes, hoping that the pressure building in his temples wouldn’t turn into a headache.

Several floors later, Tucker stepped out of the elevator and headed for the training room. Palomo had radioed him on the way up and asked permission to help Jensen with her physical therapy instead of participating in afternoon drills. It was kind of funny, actually, Tucker thought. Palomo’s relationship with Jensen had developed so quickly. Obviously the kid still denied _everything_ , but it was pretty obvious that he liked her. So of course Tucker had given him the ‘OK’. Better to get him out of his hair, anyways.

As he entered the training room, he looked around for the two lieutenants, finding them working together on a mat by some of the weights. Jensen’s hair was tied up into a messy top knot, with her bangs held back by colorful hairclips above her ears, and her expression of concentration was fully visible on her face. She was doing some sort of flexibility exercise with a resistance band, by the looks of it, and Palomo was at her side spotting for her. Both of them looked up when Tucker approached them.

“Captain Tucker!” Jensen exclaimed with surprise, her grip on the resistance band looped around the arch of her foot slackening.

“That looks like it hurts,” Tucker observed, nodding at the band.

“Oh, uh, yeah,” Jensen said. “At least it’s not as bad as when I got shot though.”

“You got lucky,” Tucker replied, and suddenly realized just how much he sounded like Wash. It was a good thing that he was wearing his helmet, otherwise Palomo and Jensen would have seen just how much his face flushed from the thought. “How’s she doing?” he asked Palomo quickly.

“Better? It seems too early for her to be doing physical therapy though,” Palomo replied.

“Doctor Grey said that it was okay,” Jensen said, looking at him. She released her grip on the resistance band and drew her healing leg slowly up to her chest with her foot flat on the floor. Doing so must have hurt, because she screwed up her face a bit. “At least it missed the bone.”

“It could have been a lot worse,” Palomo said, putting a hand on the crutch laying on the floor besides the mat and looking at Jensen meaningfully to offer it to her.

Jensen shook her head at him, saying “yeah, I guess it could have”, and he pulled his hand away. “Honestly I probably would have _died_ if Locus hadn’t shown up.”

 _Wait, what?_ Tucker stared at her, then looked at Palomo, who shrugged, making an “I don’t know” sort of face.

“Oh, come _on_ Palomo, I definitely told you about this!” Jensen exclaimed.

“I was _stressed!_ You know I don’t remember things when I get worked up,” Palomo protested.

“Okay, wait, Jensen, are you saying he saved you?” Tucker asked, interrupting their bickering, wondering how he never heard about this.

“I mean, I guess?” Jensen said, scratching an itch above her temple. “Doctor Grey was helping me after I got shot, and these two pirates showed up and were gonna kill us. But then _Locus_ took them both out. He impaled one of them with a flagpole. It was pretty gross.”

“Okay yeah that _definitely_ sounds like him. But why the fuck would he save you?”

Jensen gave an exaggerated shrug. “Doctor Grey said that it’s ‘cause he was scared of what she might do to him if he didn’t at least _try,”_ she explained, earning a snicker from Palomo.

Tucker couldn’t help but grin a little bit under his helmet at the idea of Grey chasing Locus around with a bone saw in one hand. “I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if that were true. The guy’s nothing but a fucking coward-” He broke off when Palomo started shaking his head and miming cutting his own throat and Jensen’s eyes got wide. “What?” he asked, confused.

But before either of the two could reply, they were cut off by a cheerful, “hi Tucker!”

Tucker froze, then turned to face the source of the voice, spotting Fox and her new...shadow...standing a little ways away near one of the entrances to the training room. He gave her an awkward, hesitant wave, eyes fixed on Locus, who seemed as cold and stoic as ever. He tailed Fox at a distance as she crossed the room with a bounce in her step to reach Tucker. When she noticed Jensen, she seemed to get even more cheerful.

“Well, _hi!_ Gosh, how are you? Grey told me that she assigned you to P-T this morning. Are you feeling okay?” Fox asked, and Tucker watched as she stopped at his side and looked down at Jensen with her hands on her hips.

She only held his attention for a moment though, as his wariness towards her companion drew him to turn and keep an eye on him. Locus, to Tucker’s relief, had kept his distance, and stood several yards away. Tucker fixed Locus in what he hoped was a very apparent glare, and Locus met his gaze and tilted his head slightly. Tucker held firm for a moment longer, then turned back to Fox, startling slightly when he saw her looking at him. He stared at her for a moment before realizing with embarrassment that she must have said something to him. “Huh?”

“I _asked_ if you were feeling okay too. You’ve been pretty distant recently.”

 _Oh._ Tucker stared at her, taken aback by the question.

“Plus the whole thing with your men. Even though most of them are going to be okay. Y’know, that sort of thing’s tough.”

The concern in Fox’s voice took Tucker off guard, and he found himself trying to collect himself so he could at _least_ give her some sort of answer. “I’m fine,” he replied in a small voice that came out sounding more like a question than an actual statement.

Fox nodded at him. “Okay, I believe you. I’m just asking because I know what it feels like, y’know? If you need someone to talk to, I’ll be around.”

“Uh...Thanks,” Tucker managed, confused. “I appreciate that, I guess?”

Fox gave him a satisfied nod, and Tucker found himself staring at her in awkward silence.

“Um, so what are you guys up to?” he asked lamely.

“Just passing through, actually. We’re about to head outside for some fresh air, but I figured I’d find you first, since I’ve been a little short on time recently and haven’t had a chance to speak with you,” Fox explained. Tucker got the sense that she was relieved that he’d kept the conversation going.

“Right, Wash told me about that. Said Carolina was gonna go with you.” Tucker’s eyes darted to Locus. “You think that’s a good idea?”

“It’ll be _fine_ ,” Fox said, waving a hand at him. “And if you _do_ have any concerns, you can talk to Kimball, Wash, or Carolina about them. They’re the ones pulling all the strings around here.”

 _Yeah, ‘cause talking about my concerns always goes over well,_ Tucker thought bitterly.

Fox must have taken his silence as a hint that the conversation was over, because she said, “well, I guess we’ll be on our way then. You three try to behave.”

Tucker watched as she turned on her heel with a wave of her hand, and brushed past Locus, who followed her wordlessly. As they walked away, Tucker felt some of the tension leave his body. As interesting of a person Fox was to talk to, he was far from comfortable with being around her if she was being tailed by Locus. He let out a slow breath that caught in his throat when Jensen suddenly called out, “wait!”

Fox and Locus stopped and turned back to look at her. Tucker found himself doing the same. Jensen turned a little red and fidgeted with the resistance band in her hands, seeming to regret speaking. But then Palomo put his hand on top of one of hers, and she seemed to get some of her confidence back.

“Um…I just wanted to thank you...is all…” Jensen said hesitantly, “for saving me back there.”

And when Tucker looked back at Locus, he noticed that he almost looked surprised. Almost. But then Locus tilted his chin down and said, “don’t thank me,” before turning and walking away. Fox lingered for just long enough to give them a thumbs up before she turned and caught up to him, and Tucker watched as they headed around the corner with a sigh.

At least that, whatever _that_ was, was over. Tucker glanced back at Palomo and Jensen, who seemed preoccupied with each other, then looked back the way Fox and Locus had exited.

He pulled his sword off of his hip and turned it over in his hands, getting second thoughts about practicing with it. With a sigh, he decided that he should just go and try to eat something. His energy had been low all day as it were. And it was never good to think on an empty stomach.

Tucker looked back at Palomo and Jensen and gave them a nod, then turned and headed on his way.

 

 

* * *

 

When Fox had radioed her and Wash for a “babysitter for an outside adventure,” Carolina had immediately volunteered. It wasn’t that she was eager to hang out with Fox and Locus so much as she didn’t quite trust the latter with Wash just yet. There was too much bad blood there, and the last thing any of them needed was an incident. So with a resigned sigh, she leaned against the wall and gave Fox the rendezvous point over comms, and waited for her and Locus to show up.

She waited impatiently for a while, before she started wondering if the two of them had gotten “lost.” But just as she pushed off the wall and righted herself to head down the hallway, Fox and Locus rounded the corner.

“Oh _hey_ Lina-bean!” Fox greeted.

Carolina sighed inwardly. “The two of you have an hour,” she said instead of responding with a greeting. “Babysitting” was an _excellent_ word for what she was about to be doing. Which was, of course, frustrating, because Carolina could think of at least a thousand other _useful_ things she could be doing. Oh well. As she turned and led the duo down the hall, she resigned herself to try to make the best of it. “How are things going so far?” she asked, glancing over when Fox matched her pace at her side.

“It’s a slow first day,” Fox replied.

 _As it should be_ , Carolina thought. It was far too early for Fox and Locus to be jumping into more...adventurous extracurricular activities. She had figured that this week would go by slow anyways. “What have you two been working on?” she asked, rounding the corner, blinking at the shaft of light that cut through her visor from the entrance to headquarters.

“Updating my shield and making small talk,” Fox replied. “Like I said, slow first day.”

“What was the update?” Carolina asked.

“Hm?”

“For the shield?”

“Oh! I made it so it could take sharper turns, is all. That way it has a much smaller chance of hitting one of the good guys by mistake.”

Under her helmet, Carolina frowned and side-eyed Fox. During the fight with the space pirates, Fox had appeared to be in total control of the shield. It was a little unsettling knowing that it could have been a legitimate threat to any of Kimball’s men if Fox hadn’t been as careful. Having nothing to say to that, she glanced over her shoulder at Locus, who was tailing them silently. He appeared to be paying attention, however, and tilted his head at her when he caught the look she gave him.

Carolina sucked in a short breath and looked forwards, and led the duo up the steps to the entrance of the cave. “Where are you planning on going?” she asked when she reached the middle of the staircase.

“I don’t know. Just for a walk?” Fox replied. “If that’s alright.”

“That’s fine,” Carolina replied, grateful it was that simple.

Fox nodded, then looked back at Locus. “That okay, hon?”

“It’s fine,” Locus replied.

Carolina reached the top of the stairs, and waited for Fox and Locus to reach her before leading them outside. They passed a group of Kimball’s men, who stopped working on a set of metal supports to stare at them as they walked by. Out of the corner of her eye, Carolina could have sworn she saw Locus quickly turn his head away from them, and felt a slight sense of unease.

Once they were a little ways away, Carolina stopped and looked back at Fox. “We stay in the valley, understand?”

Fox pointed finger guns at her. “Sure thing!”

Carolina sighed, then said, “you lead. But remember, stay in the valley.”

“Sure thing,” Fox said, giving her a nod and walking past. “Let’s rock and roll.”

Time went by at a crawl for Carolina as they wandered around the valley. The walk was mostly uneventful, save for the occasional discovery of debris from Warthogs or one of the two downed Pelicans. As boring as it was, Carolina was thankful for it, as the mindlessness of it all provided a short break from the stress of the conflict with Charon.

“So Lina-bean, how’s Kimball holding up?”

Carolina blinked, having been suddenly pulled back into the present moment by Fox’s question. She narrowed her eyes at the other woman for a moment, then glanced at Locus, who seemed uninterested. “She’s fine, why?”

Fox shrugged. “She’s just got a lot going on, is all. I just wanted to make sure she’s doing alright.”

 _Really, is that it?_ Carolina thought dubiously. “Why does it matter to you?”

“Well, I’m a doctor, for starters,” Fox replied. Then she let out a small gasp and her back straightened suddenly. “ _You_ think I’ve got ulterior motives, don’t you?”

 _Well_ **_that’s_ ** _a way of putting it,_ Carolina thought. But instead of saying so, she replied, “you’re new here. You used to work for Charon. And you _insisted_ that we put you and _him,_ ” she jerked her head in Locus’ direction, who was definitely paying attention now, “together.” Carolina took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to keep from giving into her emotions too much. “Tensions are high here, and we don’t know you that well. It’s not that we don’t trust you, so much as it’s just...difficult to do so.”

“And I get that,” Fox replied, her voice surprisingly calm. “But I just wanted to know if the person who is currently sort of my _boss_ was holding up alright.” And when Carolina had nothing to say to that, she added, “because I _care_ about her.”

Carolina wet her lips under her helmet, pulling a face as she swallowed dry. Then she sighed. “Like I said, she’s fine.”

Fox was silent for a moment, then nodded and said, “alright, I believe you, Lina-bean,” then walked past.

Carolina stared after her a moment, the wheels in her head turning, then she quickened her pace to catch up to the other woman. She matched Fox’s pace, and was about to start talking again when a loud _bang_ resounded across the field. Out of reflex, she froze and put her hand over one of her pistols, looking towards the source.

Fox, however, seemed unfazed, and glanced at her before exchanging a look with Locus. “Well that didn’t sound good,” she remarked.

Carolina looked over at her, then said, “I’m going to contact command and see if there’s something going on.”

“Sounds good,” Fox said with a nod. “ _I’m_ going to get a closer look.”

 _“You’re_ staying right here,” Carolina said quickly.

“Never said I had to _move,_ ” Fox replied, then looked towards the source of the sound. There was a _ping_ and her helmet made a purring noise, and a light on the side of it flared red.

Carolina, who had a hand to the side of her helmet, let it drop, staring at the light. “What...is that?”

“Short-Range Spectrum Augmenter,” Fox replied without looking at her. “Or Promethean Vision. Call it what you want.” Then she said, “looks like those guys we passed on the way out dropped some loose rocks when they were repairing the support beams. I think they’re all okay though. Doesn’t look like any of them were hurt. Thankfully.”

“You’re looking at a _rock_ ,” Carolina said. And she _was_. Right ahead of them was a large rock formation protruding from the field.

“Yeah, but I can see through it.”

“You _what?”_

The light on the side of Fox’s helmet blinked off, and the purring sound faded, and she looked back towards Carolina. “Promethean Vision lets me see through walls. It’s actually really cool.”

Carolina stared at her, a million questions flooding her brain. She glanced over at Locus, who looked equally surprised. “Why...how  do you have that?” she asked.

“Charon gave the enhancement to a few of my men and I when we went to Nalome. It’s because of that big mechanism CORA was attached to,” Fox replied, looking over at Locus meaningfully when she brought up CORA. “There’s maintenance stuff back there, so it’s helpful when you can see through walls and stuff to figure out where people are. Especially when you’re working with a huge prototype that’s prone to locking in place from time to time and trapping people in the walls.”

“That’s...interesting,” Carolina replied weakly, still having trouble processing the fact that Fox had what was essentially X-ray vision.

“It can even see through active camo, which is helpful, since there were _definitely_ a few pirates who had it during that last fight,” Fox added.

Carolina noted how Locus tilted his head at that, and couldn’t help but feel a little smug.

“Anyways, since there’s obviously no danger, wanna keep moving?” Fox asked, looking hopeful.

Carolina nodded. “Sure. Let’s go.” As they made their way through the valley in the general direction of the cave, Carolina couldn’t help but marvel at how convenient it was that the only person who could make themselves completely invisible had gotten paired up with the only person who could actually _see_ him when he did so. The universe was funny sometimes. She wondered if Kimball knew about the enhancement.

“Well this was nice,” Fox said when they drew closer to the cave, pulling Carolina out of her thoughts. “Maybe...if it’s not too much to ask...we could do this every day? I think it would be good to try to get outside as often as possible, just for a change of scenery.”

Carolina sighed. “Sure,” she said. “I’ll forward you my schedule so we can figure out what times we can meet up.” It could be worse, and it felt good to get away for a while, even if it was only an hour or so.

“Really? That’d be awesome!” Fox exclaimed. Then she tilted her head to the side, and looked over at Locus. “It looks like our session’s up,” she said to him. “I guess we got back just in time. Wanna head in?”

Locus didn’t say anything, but followed her as she headed back across the field towards headquarters. Carolina did the same, keeping her distance behind Locus.

“Thanks for coming out with us, by the way.”

Carolina looked towards Fox when she spoke. “It’s no problem.

“Yeah, but I know we’re not your favorite people. And you have better stuff to do. I just appreciate it, is all.”

Carolina fell silent, unsure of what to say to that.

“Anyways, it was nice of you,” Fox said, reaching the mouth of the cavern and turning to face her with a hand on her hip. “I guess we’ll be seeing you tomorrow?”

“I guess so,” Carolina replied, glancing at Locus out of the corner of her eye. He didn’t seem to be listening.

“Awesome!” Fox said with a grin in her voice, then she gestured to Locus. “Alright, let’s go, bud. I’m hungry!” She turned and headed back into headquarters, with Locus on her heels.

Carolina watched them go, startling when Locus slowed suddenly and looked over his shoulder at her. He gave her a nod, then kept going, disappearing around the corner after Fox. Carolina stared for a moment, wondering if he had just _thanked_ her, then shook her head and started off down the hall. Today had been a _day_. A few laps around the training room would undoubtedly clear her head.

 

* * *

 

“Soooo, how are we _doing_ today?” Donut asked, propping his elbows up on the table, lacing his fingers together, and resting his chin on them.

Across from him, Doc looked up at him with an expression that said “really?” Donut _always_ managed to catch him when he had food in his mouth. He _swore_ he did it on purpose. Doc finished chewing, swallowed, then replied, “fine? I’m fine. Things in the med bay have died down a lot, so Doctor Grey is letting me have longer lunch breaks again.”

“Well that’s nice of her!” Donut exclaimed. “I missed having lunch with you this past week.”

“Mm,” Doc agreed with a nod, glancing at Donut to see if he had anything else to add before taking another bite of his sandwich.

“So five days, huh?”

 _Oh goddamnit,_ Doc thought when Donut spoke again _._

“Not that I had any _doubts_ about Fox, since she survived falling like, a _thousand_ feet on the moon. But I’m surprised that we haven’t heard about anything going wrong,” Donut continued, glancing away.

Doc finished his bite, then replied, “y’know, I’m pretty sure Locus is scared of Fox.”

Donut raised his eyebrows at him. “You _think_ so? I mean, I wouldn’t _blame_ him!”

“I didn’t see much of the fight, but what I _did_ see all pointed to her not being someone you’d wanna mess with,” Doc said pointedly.

Donut nodded silently, looking over when Grif set his tray down on the table and sat down next to him. “Oooh they got spaghetti?” he asked

“Yeah,” Grif replied, and dug in.

“I think I might go up and get some,” Donut mused.

“Have you eaten yet?” Doc asked.

“Nope.”

“Then you should.”

Donut nodded, then stood. Doc looked over when he walked away, eyes catching Simmons as approached and walked around the table, sitting down next to him. “I really hope this stuff doesn’t give me heartburn,” he muttered.

“You’ll be fine,” Grif said in between bites.

Doc didn’t say anything, and instead focused on finishing his sandwich before Donut got back. He was about halfway through when Sarge took the spot next to Donut’s vacant seat, with a salad on his tray.

“Is that all you’re getting?” Doc asked.

“That pasta ain’t worth the heartburn,” Sarge replied, taking a bite of his salad.

“See?!” Simmons exclaimed, looking pointedly at Grif, who just rolled his eyes.

Doc shook his head and took another bite of his sandwich, looking over when he saw Donut in the corner of his eye. Fox was with him. _Huh,_ Doc thought, wondering how both she and _him_ managed to be off for lunch at the same time. _I guess Doctor Grey really_ **_isn’t_ ** _busy right now._

“Hey, look who I found!” Donut announced once he got close to their table.

Fox raised her hand in a small wave. “Donut asked me to sit with you guys,” she said.

“There’s a free spot next to me,” Doc offered.

Fox dipped her head in thanks and walked around and sat down next to him.

Doc glanced over at her, frowning when he noticed she hadn’t gotten any food. “Are you gonna eat something?” he asked.

“Oh, uh, I already had a protein bar,” Fox replied. “I was actually just coming to...socialize.”

“Protein bar ain’t a meal,” Sarge said, looking over at her.

“I know, but with the meds I’m on, it’s tough to wanna eat anything in the middle of the day,” Fox explained.

“You’re on meds?” Grif asked, slurping a loose noodle into his mouth.

Simmons gave him a look. “You can’t just _ask_ if a person is on _meds_ , Grif!”

“She just said she _was!_ ”

“It’s cool,” Fox said, waving a hand. “I don’t mind. It’s funny, I actually just got Grey to write me a prescription for them a few days ago, which is probably why the side effects are so bad right now.”

“Wait, is it for what we were talking about when you first started working with us?” Doc asked.

Fox nodded. “Yeah,” she said with a laugh. “You don’t realize how hard it is to function with fucking ADHD until you’re stuck around other people.”

“ _Tell_ me about it,” Simmons muttered, picking at his spaghetti with his fork.

“Well, I don’t notice a difference. You’re still as talkative as ever,” Sarge said, finishing his salad and sitting back with his arms crossed.

“Thanks. I think.”

Doc watched Fox for a moment, then took his unopened water bottle off of his tray and set it in front of her. “You’re probably dehydrated. That stuff sucks the water right out of you.”

Fox looked over at him. “Well aren’t you a little mother hen?”

Donut giggled, “yeah, that’s him. Always worrying about everyone else.”

“He never worries about _me,_ ” Grif said flatly.

“That’s because you sent me to another dimension,” Doc shot back.

“He did _what_ now?” Fox asked.

“There was a teleportation cube mishap,” Donut explained.

Fox looked over at Doc questioningly.

“And none of them actually tried to bring me back,” Doc said grumpily, finishing off his sandwich.

“Huh,” Fox said, then looked down at the water bottle in front of her. She seemed to consider it for a moment, then reached up and pulled off her helmet.

Doc couldn’t help but notice how the Reds all stared at her as she did so, and realized that none of them had probably seen her without her helmet yet.

“Dude,” Grif said, actually looking surprise. “You’re Asian.”

Fox gave him a confused look as she set her helmet down on the bench beside her. “Yeah? Were you expecting something _else?”_

“Well, you have a Boston accent, so…”

Fox blinked. “What? No I don’t!”

“It’s pretty subtle, but you definitely have a Boston accent,” Donut agreed, nodding.

Fox frowned and stared at her water bottle. “Huh, maybe I really _did_ go crazy on that moon.”

“Can’t be any crazier than Locus,” Doc said, trying to cheer her up.

Fox raised an eyebrow at him.

“Speakin’ of which, how’re you doin’ with him?” Sarge piped up.

“Is he giving you any trouble?” Simmons asked.

“Pfft, _no,”_ Fox snorted. “Honestly, he’s kind of a big pushover.”

Doc, who had been in the middle of digging through his lunchbox for an apple, turned and looked at her in surprise. _“What?”_

“Yeah, he’s real easy to get along with,” Fox said, waving him off and then reaching for the water bottle, attempting to unscrew the cap. Eventually she gave up and handed it off to Sarge, who popped it open for her. “He kinda just tails me around being a grump and acting like a kicked puppy. And whenever I use my ‘mom voice’ on him, which is rarely, he gets all “ooooh no I’m so sorry” and just sulks for a few hours,” she continued, taking the water bottle back from Sarge and raising it to her lips. She took a sip, then set it back down on the table. “He’s making progress through. He trusts me a lot more than he did when we first got started, and it’s only been five days.”

“Well that’s good,” Doc said, relieved that she wasn’t having to put up with too much.

“Mom voice?” Simmons asked.

“Oh, yeah. It’s what I call the tone of voice I use when I’m being firm with someone,” Fox replied casually. “Doc’s already heard me use it a few times with some of the patients.”

And Doc couldn’t help but chuckle as he remembered the looks on all of those patients’ faces when Fox had gone from calm and sociable to tough and threatening. “It’s pretty funny when she has to do it. Though I definitely got scared the first time I heard it.”

“So do you have kids…?” Donut asked.

“Nah. The term ‘mom voice’ was dubbed when I was a camp counselor over the summers when I was still in college. One of my co-workers called it that,” Fox replied.

“So what were you, a Girl Scout?” Sarge asked.

“Nope. Worked at a camp on the Hale Reservation in Mass,” Fox explained. “It was one of those wilderness camps where you teach kids how to build fires and rafts out of sticks.”

“Well, it explains why you love the outdoors so much,” Doc said. “You’ve been dragging Locus outside every day this week.”

“It’s good for him,” Fox replied.

“The outdoors aren’t good for _anybody_ ,” Simmons said. “There are _mosquitoes_ out there.”

“So wear bug spray,” Grif replied, finishing off his pasta and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“And get covered in chemicals? Fuck that!”

Doc shook his head as the two continued to bicker, looking over when Fox leaned in and stage-whispered, “so how long have _they_ been married?”

“Ever since they arrived at Blood Gulch,” Sarge replied grumpily.

“Yeah I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s where we came from before all our misadventures led to us crashing here,” Doc explained.

“Ohhhh.”

“Speakin’ of which,” Sarge said. “I think it’s time we address the elephant in the room.” He stood and slammed a hand down in the table. “Are ya Red Team or Blue Team, Fox?”

Doc chuckled when Fox just stared at him, confusion written on her face. “You can be _neither_ ,” he offered.

“Shuddap ya damn _pacifist!”_ Sarge barked, pointing at him, then looked back over at Fox. “Well? There’s only one right answer.”

“I thought the teams didn’t matter any more, since you and the Blues worked together now?” Fox asked.

“Hmph, that’s what they _want_ you to think! But the second we let our guard down, they’ll strike!” Sarge huffed, then leaned in towards Fox. “So tell me, are you a Red, or are you scum-sucking, low life, good-fer-nothin’ _Blue?”_

“She’s totally Blue Team,” Grif said, rolling his eyes. “Her _armor_ has blue _on_ it.”

“Your sister had yellow armor, and _she_ was on Blue Team,” Donut said. “I don’t think it actually matters what color your armor is!”

“Uh...I’m Team Make Everyone Feel Okay And Not Dead?” Fox replied, offering a crooked smile and pointing finger guns at Sarge.

Sarge stared at her, then gave Doc an accusatory look. “Look what you did. She coulda been one’ve us!”

Doc just shrugged. Oh well. At least Fox was taking his side, it seemed like.

“I think you guys have a strong enough team without me, actually,” Fox said quickly. “But no, I think I’m with Doc on this one. I’m staying neutral.”

“Hmph,” Sarge grumbled, sitting back down and crossing his arms, a pout on his grizzled face.

“So do you have any big plans for next week?” Doc asked Fox. “You said that you’ve got a report you need to file with Kimball tomorrow.”

“I might see if I can calibrate my shield so Locus can use it so he won’t take as many hits during the next fight,” Fox replied.

Doc glanced over when he heard Simmons choke next to him. He reached over and gave Simmons a few hefty pats to the back to help him out. Simmons reached for his water and gulped it down, his face almost as red as his armor.

“Are you okay?” Doc asked.

Simmons just nodded, and across from him, Grif drew himself up and screeched, _“WHY?!”_ at Fox.

“Because I wanna test out _ShowStopper_ ’s capabilities. And also because he took a _lot_ of hits last fight. And if we’re going to be teamed up, I need him alive,” Fox explained with a strained look of calm on her face that Doc knew was the result of her being yelled at.

Doc looked away, down at the table. This wasn’t the first time she had mentioned this around him. Late one night after the two of them had finished helping assist Grey with a surgery, she had brought it up. Doc had given her a similar reaction to the one Grif had given her, though in a slightly less screechy voice. Her reasoning made sense. He had been there during the fight with the pirates. And he had seen how much Fox cared about the people she worked with. He’d been on the receiving end of it a number of times as of late, when the med bay was filled with patients in need of care. She had always managed to sneak him a snack bar or a drink whenever he didn’t have time to get one for himself. Even though it was obvious that Fox knew what sort of person Locus was, it also fit the profile that she would care about his wellbeing regardless.

“You’d best be careful with that,” Sarge said, pulling Doc back to reality.

Fox looked over at him. “Don’t worry, Pops, I will be.”

“And you’d better not get us all killed,” Grif warned.

“Relax, I know what I’m doing,” Fox replied.

Simmons looked over at her, his organic eye watery and red from coughing. Then he looked to Grif, who sighed and stood, picking up his tray. “Yeah, I doubt that. But whatever,” Grif said, turning and walking away. Simmons watched him go for a moment, then wordlessly picked up his own tray and followed him.

Doc watched the two put up their trays, then exit the mess hall, then looked back when Sarge stood. “Where’re you off to?” he asked.

“Patrol,” Sarge replied. “Gotta make sure those pirates don’t catch us with our pants down again.”

As Sarge walked away, Doc looked over at Donut, who just gave him a shrug. “For the record, I don’t care _what_ you do,” Donut offered to Fox, who appeared unfazed.

“Thanks,” she said flatly, raising an eyebrow at him.

The three of them sat in an uncomfortable silence after that for a moment, then Doc spoke up. “Hey, Donut, Lopez, and I were gonna throw on a movie tonight. Do you wanna join us?”

Fox gave him a small smile. “Maybe. I was going to look around for some ginger hair dye. See if I can bribe anyone into giving up theirs.”

“I can hook you up!” Donut exclaimed, slamming a hand down on the table.

“Don’t go taking Carolina’s hair dye,” Doc warned.

“Nah, I won’t,” Donut said, waving a hand. He grinned at Fox. “I could even dye it for you, if you wanted. I bleach my hair all the time. That way you could still watch the movie with us!”

Fox chuckled. “I’ll think about it, how about that?”

Donut’s grin grew bigger, and Doc couldn’t help but laugh a little at his boyfriend’s enthusiasm. “Great! Just let me know!”

Doc’s smile faded a little, and he looked over at Fox. “We should probably get back.”

“Probably. What time is it?”

“I think we’re running late.”

“Shit.”

Doc packed up his lunch and looked over at Donut. “I’ll see you tonight,” he said, then stood and leaned over the table and kissed him. “Love you!”

“Love ya too!”

Doc turned and let Fox walk past him, her helmet tucked under one arm, then followed her as she headed for the exit. Hopefully Grey wouldn’t be too upset with them.

 

 

* * *

 

Kimball stared down at the schedule Fox had brought her, trying to process what was written on it. “Your reasoning for this proposal, as you have stated, is “because science”?” she asked, looking up at Fox.

“I...meant to edit that. Sorry,” Fox replied, her shoulders going stiff.

Kimball folded her hands on top of her desk and looked Fox up and down. “So?”

“I was thinking that after the fight with the pirates, Locus could use a little...defense boost. He took a _lot_ of damage. And if I’m going to work with him, he needs to be alive, and there’s no way those pirates aren’t coming back. Hargrove isn’t paying them for nothing,” Fox elaborated.

Kimball blinked a few times, processing this. “It’s been two weeks since you first started working with him. And while your reports show immense improvement in his behavior, I don’t think this is something he’s ready for yet.”

“Hitting the ground running isn’t always a bad thing,” Fox replied. “And you’ve already moved him up to six hours with me a day.”

“I’m aware,” Kimball sighed. “But he’s still showing some levels of hostility towards my men and the Reds and Blues. Giving him a _weapon_ is hardly the best way to handle this.”

“Actually,” Fox said, “he just seems...frustrated. With himself and with this whole situation. I think he had it in his head that he would be doing more than just hanging out with me outside of his cell.”

“I see,” Kimball said. And she could see it; him being frustrated. But it didn’t exactly change her stance on the matter. “The purpose of pairing you with him was to give him a small amount of freedom in a controlled setting.”

“Which is why I wanted him to work with the shield,” Fox replied.

Kimball tilted her head to the side, surprised. _Alright, what aren’t you telling me?_ she thought. “How is _that_ controlled?”

“So if I were to calibrate the shield to him, it would still prioritize me over him. So if he tried to throw it at one of your men, I could just call it back,” Fox explained.

Kimball thought about this for a moment. There were a number of assumptions about that shield that she had made based on what she’d seen during the fight with the pirates. The most prominent of which being that Fox was in complete control of it and new exactly what she was doing. The problem lied in the fact that Locus, like the rest of them, had probably never used a weapon like hers before. So not only was there a good chance of him hurting someone by mistake, but once he got good enough to use it well, his odds of being a legitimate threat to her men went up. But Fox said she could make the shield prioritize her. And she sounded _very_ certain of it too. And Kimball had to admit that she was curious, to a degree, to see if Locus had advanced far enough to be cooperative in a training exercise. There was only one way to find out.

“Very well, I approve. _However_ ,” Kimball said firmly, before Fox got too excited, “I’m going to _be_ there. So will Wash and Carolina.”

Fox beamed. “That works fine! Honestly, I think this’ll be fun for everyone involved. Although…” She trailed off, and her demeanor became far less energetic. “You might want to have Grey on standby.”

“Why’s that?” Kimball asked, doubt already beginning to fill her.

“Because the way the shield calibrates to power armor sometimes causes really bad bruising,” Fox replied. “Which is why, if you noticed, on the schedule, I put the following day down as a sort of free period. Just in case he needs the rest. Because at the very least, he’s gonna be pretty sore.”

“Ah,” Kimball said, relaxing. “That’s fine. I’ll have her on standby.” She glanced over the rest of Fox’s schedule. It all looked fairly reasonable. Lots of outside time, but that had sort of become the norm. “Where are you hoping for this training to take place?”

“It’s your base,” Fox shrugged. “You tell me.”

“I can schedule a block of time on the training floor.”

Fox tilted her head up in thought. “That _should_ give us enough space.”

“Good,” Kimball replied. Then hit a few buttons on the datapad Fox had handed her. “I’ve approved the rest of your schedule. For now, you’re dismissed.” She handed the datapad back to Fox.

Fox nodded in acknowledgement and headed for the door, pausing right in front of it and turning back and saying, “you might wanna bring some popcorn for this, by the way. It’s gonna be a hoot.” Then she was gone.

Kimball stared after her, then sighed and shook her head. It was definitely going to be _something._

 

* * *

 

“Okay, so, you read over the schedule on like, Sunday, so you know what today is, yeah?”

Locus looked up when Fox spoke as she led him through the hallway. “Yes.”

“Cool. Did I tell you that Kimball, Wash, and Carolina are gonna be there? And also maybe Grey?” Fox asked looking back.

“You did.”

“And you’re still cool with that?” she asked, still not looking in front of her, and now on a very clear collision course with a soldier who had just turned the corner and had their nose in a datapad.

“Careful,” Locus replied, nodding ahead.

“Huh? _Oh!”_ Fox quickly side-stepped to avoid running into the soldier on their way past. “Kids these days and their technology,” she sighed. “You gonna answer me?” She asked.

“It’s fine.”

“Okay, great!” Fox said, leading him around the corner and into an elevator.

The schedule she had given him at the beginning of the week stated that they would be on the training room floor for the majority of their six-hour period together. Locus was still trying to wrap his head around _why_ Kimball had increased the amount of time out of his cell. He watched the elevator doors slide shut, then looked down at Fox. “Why did Kimball increase our time?”

Fox looked up at him. “Because you’ve been improving.”

Locus doubted that, but didn’t say so. “Was this always the plan?”

Fox looked away. “Between you and me, the goal is to get you out of that cell permanently. Kimball seemed...like she was considering it. But you have a _lot_ of work to do before you get there.”

Under his helmet, Locus blinked. He never imagined that Kimball would allow him the same freedoms as her men, _especially_ after what he did. It seemed odd. And something ugly in the back of his head thought it seemed like an _opportunity._ He brushed it aside and asked. “Such as?”

“For starters, you gotta stop being such a grouch to everyone around here,” Fox replied, holding up her laptop, which had been tucked under her arm, and picking a piece of lint out of one of the monitor joints. “You should also probably apologize to Kimball at some point, because you _definitely_ need to.”

“I’m not--” Locus cut off. Was he really coming off as hostile? “What do you mean?”

Fox chuckled and looked back up at him. “Say you’re _sorry?_ ”

“No...about being a...grouch.”

Fox tilted her head slightly. “You talk like a _James Bond_ villain,” she said after a moment.

“A _what.”_

“You’ve never seen those movies?” Fox asked, shaking her head.

“I-- _what_ is your _point?”_

“You’re doing it right now,” Fox said.

And Locus froze. “Doing what?”

“Being a _grouch.”_

 _Oh_ , Locus thought, and fell silent.

“Yeah man, it’s all in how you talk to people,” Fox continued. “Like, I get it. You’ve been through some shit, and you’re upset at this whole situation, and you’re mad at yourself. But everything around you isn’t in your head. We’ve all got stuff we’re going through too. You gotta consider that. Just be nice to people.”

And Locus knew that. And the fact that he was apparently expressing himself in a way that made it seem like he _didn’t_ filled him with frustration. _Why did it have to be so_ **_difficult?_ **

“And I get it,” Fox continued. “You’re not really a social butterfly. And that’s okay. That’s cool. And sure, being blunt is sort of...your thing. Like we all have a thing. Mine is that I talk really fast and sometimes my brain can’t keep up. But it’s something to work on, y’know? So just think before you speak, and ask yourself if what you’re about to say might make someone upset.”

“Fine,” Locus replied. Then thought better of it and said, “I...I understand.”

“Better,” Fox said with an approving nod, then looked back at the elevator doors. She was silent for a moment, then said, “is this thing broken? I swear to god the is the longest elevator ride I’ve been on.”

It was right then that the elevator pulled to a stop and the doors slid open.

“Okay, there we go. Talk about _convenient,”_ Fox said, stepping out and shaking her head. “I was beginning to get worried for a second there. I mean, I like you and all, but I wouldn’t want to spend an eternity in an elevator with you. No offence.”

Locus just stared at her and said nothing.

Fox chuckled. “Okay, nothing to that, huh? Oh well.” She turned and gestured with her hand to follow her. “C’mon.”

When they finally stepped into the training room, Locus was surprised to find that it was empty. Save for Kimball, Wash, and Carolina, of course. The three of them stood off to the side, likely having a conversation, and looked over when he and Fox walked in.

“Well, hello everyone! I hope we all slept well. Anyone bring any popcorn?” Fox asked, stopping in front of them with her free hand on her hip.

Locus stopped a good distance behind her, knowing full well that neither of the three would want him anywhere near them.

“Popcorn?” Wash asked, glancing over at Locus, who quickly looked away.

“It’s a joke, Stripes. Though I wouldn’t have minded,” Fox said, pulling her hand off her hip and waving it dismissively. “Actually, though, you guys _are_ early. I still have to calibrate the shield,” she continued, holding up her laptop.

“How long will that take?” Locus heard Kimball ask.

“Maybe an hour? Probably closer to a halfie, though. So if you wanna go get coffee, now’s your chance,” Fox replied.

Locus looked back and watched the three talk amongst themselves, silently hoping that they would leave and give him more time to prepare for what came next.

“I’ll stay,” Kimball said. “You two go on ahead.”

Locus groaned inwardly. He watched as Wash and Carolina started to go, but then Carolina stopped and turned back and asked, “you like yours black, right?”

Kimball seemed surprised by this. “Yes,” she replied slowly.

Carolina nodded silently, then caught up to Wash, and the two stepped into the hallway.

“Well that’s awful sweet of her,” Fox said.

Kimball looked back at her. “Did you want anything?”

“Nah, thanks. I can’t drink coffee in the morning,” Fox said, shaking her head. “Last time I tried that, I had an anxiety attack that lasted forty-eight hours. Not a good time.” She turned and looked around, her shoulders falling a little.

“What’s wrong?” Locus asked.

She looked over at him. “Oh, uh. I just realized there aren’t any tables for me to set this thing up on.” She shrugged. “Oh well.” Then she stepped away from Kimball, and sat down cross-legged on the floor. “This is _terrible_ for my back. But I’ll live.”

“You’re a little young to have back problems,” Locus said flatly.

Fox burst out laughing, catching him --and apparently Kimball, as she stiffened up momentarily-- off guard. “Aw, aren’t you sweet,” she said, looking up at him. “How old do you think I _am?”_

Locus thought for a moment. She hadn’t _looked_ that old when he first saw her face. But then again, the lighting wasn’t the best down where his cell was. “Mid-thirties?”

“Nah, honey, I’m fourteen months older than you,” Fox said, shaking her head.

That would make her….forty-four, Locus realized. She was _far_ older than he had expected. Of course, her bubbly, outgoing personality also contributed to how young his original perception of her had been.

“I think I’m probably older than you too,” Fox said, looking over at Kimball.

“I’m thirty-five,” Kimball replied.

“Forty-four. I’m older,” Fox said, opening her laptop and pulling her shield off of her hip, setting it down next to her.

Locus noted the way Kimball looked over at him, like she was doing the math.

“You guys might as well grab a seat,” Fox said after a moment of silence. “Like I said, this could take a little bit.”

Locus looked over at Kimball, then got closer to Fox and sat down. Kimball opted to stay standing. Locus chose not to let this bother him too much, and instead focused on what Fox was doing. He watched her for a little bit, then asked, “how does the calibration work?”

“So, last night I entered the information for your power armor and implants that I got from your files into this little program here,” Fox said, wiggling the pointer around inside of the window that was pulled up on the screen. “Now I gotta run an automatic calibration, where it will construct a sort of default rig based on your armor. After that, I’ve gotta synch the rig up to you through the WiFi, and then run a manual calibration.”

“What’s the purpose of the default rig?” Locus asked.

“It’s what will allow you to actually use the shield,” Fox said. “Speaking of which…” She pulled out a cable and hooked the shield up to her laptop’s USB port. “The manual calibration will be on you. That’ll be you actually going through the motions.”

“How will I know what to do?”

“I’ll show you!” Fox replied. “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna make you ride without training wheels on the first try.”

“Fox, I want to see how it will prioritize you after the calibration is complete,” Kimball spoke up.

Fox gave her a two-fingered salute. “Sure thing!” Then the looked back at Locus and said. “Not sure if I forgot to mention this, but the shield will respond to me over you. So if we both call it at the same time, it’s not gonna go to you. Which is why we gotta be good at communicating with each other by the time those pirates show up again.”

 _Interesting,_ Locus thought. “Noted.” He looked over when he heard the sound of footsteps echoing through the space accompanied by the distinct sound of Wash’s voice, and watched as the two Freelancers stepped into the training room and approached them.

Carolina handed Kimball her coffee, then looked back towards Fox. “How’s it looking?”

“Getting there,” Fox replied. “You guys’ bandwidth here _sucks._ ”

“It might have something to do with the two space ships that…” Wash trailed off, and Locus caught how he glanced in his direction, “...crashed.”

Apparently Fox had noticed too, because she looked at Wash, then back at him. “There’s a story here,” she said, amusement in her voice.

“Yeah…” Wash said, clearly regretting bringing it up at all.

“Well, we’ll be here for a little bit. Why don’t you tell it?” Fox suggested.

Locus sighed and closed his eyes and looked away, listening as Carolina spoke up and said, “the first ship was the one _we_ were on. Us and the Reds and Blues were on our way home.”

“And the second?” Fox asked.

“We...mighthavedroppedthesecondoneonLocusandFelix,” Wash said quickly.

Locus opened his eyes and looked at Wash irately, then met Fox’s gaze when she turned her head and stared at him.

_“What?”_

“It wasn’t a good day,” Locus replied.

“What the fuck are you _made_ of?!” Fox exclaimed. “You survived that _and_ crash-landing on my moon?! Are you some type of _roach?!”_

“No, _Wash_ is a roach,” Carolina spoke up. “He’s been run over at _least_ a dozen times.”

Fox looked back at her and Wash. “Is it because he looks like a highway?”

Wash let out a long, world-weary sigh. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Ah,” Fox said, then focused back on her screen, which Locus noticed had a loading bar on it that was filled to about sixty percent. He couldn’t help but feel relieved. At least they were close to being done with…whatever _this_ was.

“So...uh...can we expect to see any flips or anything today, or no?”

Locus looked up when Wash spoke, then glanced over at Fox, figuring he must be talking to her. But when Fox didn’t respond, and instead looked back at him, he realized that Wash had been speaking to _him._ Caught off guard, and confused as to why Wash was even _talking_ to him, he scrambled for an answer. “I...I’m not--”

“Unless he was a figure skater or gymnast at some point in his life, and it wasn’t in his file, I doubt it,” Fox said.

Locus gave her a grateful look that he hoped she caught.

“Were _you_ one of those?” Wash asked.

“Figure skater. Four years in high school. It’s all muscle memory. Had a friend who was like...a professional gymnast while I was in college. We used to fuck around and do fancy parkour shit together,” Fox replied, head tilted towards her computer screen.

That made sense, Locus thought. Fox’s execution of her movements in the fight with the pirates had been incredibly precise. It took someone with that sort of experience to have the spacial awareness needed to pull off her style of fighting.

“So I take it that’s where you learned to do all those flips?” Kimball asked.

“Bingo.”

“Doesn’t that leave you open to taking hits?” Carolina asked.

“Well, that’s what he’s for,” Fox said, nodding back at Locus.

“But what’s the _point_ of doing them?”

“Momentum,” Fox replied. “I mean, _look_ at me, Lina-bean. I’m tiny. And this shield weighs close to two-hundred pounds. And while I don’t really _feel_ that weight, since it _is_ a fixed point, I _do_ have to fight it when I throw it, otherwise it wouldn’t go very far.”

“So _that’s_ why it was so heavy!” Wash exclaimed.

“Huh,” Carolina said, and handed him her coffee. She pulled off her helmet and tucked it under her arm, then took it back from him, taking a sip of it and making a face.

“Still too hot?” Wash asked her.

“A little.”

“Oh, look at that, we’re done!” Fox exclaimed.

Locus looked back at her screen, confirming that it was, in fact, done. Then he stood.

Fox quickly set up the manual calibration, unhooked her shield from her laptop and did so too, planting her hands on her lower back and stretching until there was an audible _pop!_ “God, I feel like a _grandma_ ,” she complained, straightening up. “Alright, let’s get started.” She held out an arm, palm facing up, and Locus watched as the shield leapt up and hovered above her wrist. Then she turned and walked past him, out into the open training floor. “Follow me.”

Locus did as he was told, tailing her and stopping short of where she had, waiting for what came next.

“Okay, so before we get started with this, I want you to know that I’ve only ever calibrated this thing _once_ before. For myself. And when I did that, like an hour later, my whole body was black and blue and sore as fuck,” Fox explained, looking at him meaningfully. “There’s no way to know if that’ll happen to you. I’ve updated this thing a dozen times, so maybe I managed to work that out of it. But the reason it did that before is because the automatic rig puts a _lot_ of strain on your muscles and sometimes causes your armor to overcompensate. It won’t do any _real_ damage, but it’ll definitely leave you hurting if it does that. If it gets too much, just let me know. I can save the profile and we can come back to it if you’re still up for it.”

Locus thought about this. He had expected _something_ to happen as a result of using the shield. Pain hadn’t been it. But he’d dealt with pain before. Whatever the shield might cause, he doubted it would be as bad as some of his past injuries. “Understood.”

“You wanna go for it?” Fox asked, tilting her head slightly.

“I’m willing to try.”

“Great!” Fox exclaimed. “Hold out your hand and try to stay relaxed.”

Locus did so, and watched as Fox brought the shield over and held it above his hand.

“You’re going to feel some weight. That’s normal. Just keep your hand steady,” Fox said, both hands around the shield base. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

Fox pulled her hands away, and the shield base dropped. The weight was immediate, and was far stronger than what Locus had expected. It was almost like the shield and his hand were two magnets of opposite charges, but she shield was much, much stronger. And then, like that, the weight was gone, and the shield hovered above his open hand effortlessly. “Is that it?” he asked.

“That’s it.”

“What did that do?”

“It was figuring out its parameters for how much of the shield’s weight you can handle, and how much it’ll need to compensate,” Fox replied. “So what you’re gonna wanna do next is extrude the blade. So make a fist with your hand, than open it up with your fingers straight, okay? And try not to flinch. It might throw off the calibration.”

Locus nodded, then did as she said, making a fist, then opening his hand. The ring around the shield base sprung out immediately. And even though he’d been given a warning, Locus couldn’t help but tense up a little.

“Yeah, it comes out fast. It’ll take some getting used to,” Fox said with a laugh. “So now you gotta learn how to retract it. It’s basically the same motion, but reversed. So go fingers straight, then make a fist.”

Locus did so, and the blade retracted. “How do you avoid retracting it by mistake in a fight?” he asked. It was such a simple movement; one that was too easy to make without thinking.

“You can lock it. Which I’ll show you in a sec,” Fox replied. “So pop it back out.”

Locus obeyed and looked over once the blade had extruded again.

“So, you ever watch _Star Trek?_ ” Fox asked, putting a hand on her hip.

“I’m familiar with it.”

“Do you know how to do the ‘live long and prosper’ thing with your hand?”

Locus thought for a moment. What did that look like again? “Possibly,” he said.

“Give it a try.”

And Locus did. He struggled with it, as it was such an awkward position to move his fingers in, but he got it. The second he did so, the shield emitted a mechanical clicking sound, and when he looked at it, several panels on the surface of the blade had slid back, revealing a ring of what appeared to be vents that glowed a pale blue. “What are those?”

“Vents for the energy relay. When you lock the shield, it expects you to start throwing it around, so it opens its vents so it doesn’t overheat,” Fox explained, nodding at the shield.

Locus nodded. So the energy _did_ emit heat. It made sense considering the shield created a hard light barrier around itself.

“So now I want you to take a chance at throwing it,” Fox said, and when Locus looked over at her, he noticed she was taking a few steps back.

“How do I do that?” Fox had mentioned that she used spins and flips to gain momentum, but he knew he couldn’t do any of those.

Fox chuckled. “Have you ever thrown a frisbee before?”

“Is it similar?”

“Yeah, just keep your eyes on your target and stop your arm movement once you’ve pointed it in the direction you want to go. The shield will take care of most of the maneuvering for you.”

“How hard should I throw it?”

“Give it a light toss. We don’t want to wreck anything in here.”

“How do I know if I’m throwing it too hard?”

Locus looked over when Fox laughed and shook her head at the floor, then looked back at him. “You’re worrying too much. Just relax and trust yourself. You got this, champ.”

Locus sighed, staring at the far wall of the training room. Then he took a stance, pulling back the arm that the shield hovered over. He glanced over at Wash, Carolina, and Kimball, noting that Wash and Kimball had their helmets off now too. All three of them seemed to have tensed up and were watching him closely. He quickly looked away and back at the wall, sucked in a deep breath, then stepped forward and threw the shield. It hurtled away at a much faster speed than he had intended, and he glanced over at Fox to make sure he’d done it right.

“Good, now make a fist,” she said, noticing his gaze and nodding at him.

Locus did so, looking back at the shield, and startling slightly when he saw that it immediately turned and started flying back towards it.

“Relax. Hand out, palm up, like you’re catching a pizza pie,” Fox said, clearly noticing how he tensed up. “Just follow the motion, and it’ll sense you and stop.”

Locus did as he was told, trying to remember to breathe and keep his hand from shaking. He had seen how this thing cut through power armor like it was nothing. And now it was hurtling towards him.

The shield reached him, and he followed its motion with his arm, eyes never leaving it as its rotation slowed and it came to a stop below his open palm. Locus stared at it for a moment, adrenaline coursing through him, then looked over sharply when he heard Fox let out a whoop.

“See? You’re a natural!” Fox exclaimed, clapping.

Locus stared at her a moment longer, taking a moment to try to calm down, then he straightened up, holding the shield by his side. “Is that it?”

“Oh no,” Fox said, a smile in her voice, “we’re just getting warmed up. Now you’re gonna get a running start.”

For the next two hours, Fox ran him through drill after drill. At first, Locus didn’t quite see what she had meant when she told him that the calibration would be painful, but as the time dragged by, he felt his muscles getting weaker. Eventually, Carolina left and returned with a datapad for Kimball, before dipping out for good bidding Kimball and Wash farewell, which Locus was grateful for. One less person to watch him wear himself out. By the time Fox finally called for a break, he felt like he’d just finished dragging a tractor uphill through the mud in a hurricane.

The second Fox showed him how to holster the shield, and he finished doing so, he practically collapsed into a sitting position.

“You’ve done well,” Fox said, patting him on the shoulder as she walked past.

He took a minute to catch his breath, staring at the floor, then looked over and watched as Fox crouched down in front of her laptop, likely to check the calibration.

“Enjoying the show so far?” he heard her ask Kimball and Wash.

“If I had known it would be this...relaxed, I would have brought this with me from the start,” Kimball replied, holding up her datapad.

“Do you think we should get Doctor Grey in here?” Wash asked her, glancing in Locus’ direction. “He’s not looking too good.”

“It’s like I said,” Fox spoke up, “the calibration is painful. Thankfully, I’ve just got one more thing to show him before we’re done for the day. Speaking of which, I’m sending him right to that armor rig once I’m done, if that’s okay. I know it’s been off and on about keeping him in it, but the pirates haven’t shown any signs of wanting to fuck with us, and he’s going to need actual _rest.”_

“So you’re cutting the session short?” Kimball asked.

“With respect, the guy’s a fucking puddle.”

“Fair enough,” Kimball replied, but Locus could hear the slight annoyance in her voice.

As much as he hated being described as a...puddle...it was a pretty accurate label considering that he could barely move without it hurting. His legs felt like jelly, and every breath send pain shooting up his back. At least it was almost over. He looked over when Fox stood, and sighed as she headed towards him.

“You ready?” she asked when she got close.

Locus looked back at the shield hovering a few inches off of the floor next to him, then back at her. “Ready.”

“You need a hand?” she asked moving closer. “Or-- oh. Okay. You got it then. Never mind,” she said when he pulled himself to his feet.

Locus glanced at her, then called the shield back to him with one of the hand motions she had taught him. It shot up and hovered over his wrist. “What’s next?” he asked.

“Next, I’m gonna teach you how to do a concussive blast, or C-B for short,” Fox said, stepping up beside him.

Locus wasn’t sure if he liked the way that sounded. “What does that do?”

“It knocks your enemies back. Or blows them up, depending on how strong of a blast you create,” Fox said with a shrug. Then she turned and looked at the far wall. “So what you’re going to wanna do is float the shield in front of you and then activate the hard light barrier like I showed you how to do earlier.”

Locus did so, pulling his hand back from it and letting the shield hover with its vents parallel to the far wall, blue energy whirling out of them.

“Then you’re gonna wanna make fists with both hands, and knock ‘em together,” Fox continued. “But don’t do that quite yet, okay?” she added quickly.

“What’s wrong?” Locus asked, looking over at her.

“There’s some safety stuff I need to go over with you,” Fox said, glancing over towards Kimball and Wash.

Locus did the same and noticed how both appeared to be listening intently.

“So first of all, this is sort of like...a last resort. Because it can do a lot of harm,” Fox explained, nodding at the shield. “At full power, this thing’s C-B can break the sound barrier.”

Locus stared at the shield. “Is that what you used to get us out of the tower at Station Alpha?” he asked, looking back at her.

“It is. And what I used was probably only at around sixty-percent power,” Fox replied with a nod.

“How does it work?”

“So what happens is the plasma particles from the energy relay get sucked in really fast to the center of the front of the shield facing away from you. And then they burst apart and send out a massive shockwave,” Fox explained.

Locus blinked, then tilted his head at her. “But what you did on Nalome followed a specific path. Wouldn’t what you just described affect everything around it?”

“Oooh, _someone_ has a basic understanding of physics,” Fox said, a grin in her voice. “So the vents around the blade push out energy too that acts like a sort of counter to the C-B. The way that the blast actually travels is in a sort of spiral, because of how the vents interact with it. Obviously, the radius increases the farther away you are from the target, but it _is_ guided.”

Locus didn’t quite understand the mechanics Fox was describing, but he decided that none of it _really_ mattered, so long as the C-B was mostly safe. “How do you determine the strength of the blast?”

“By how hard you slam your fists together. I’ve capped you off at forty-percent, for the record. Because honestly, you probably won’t ever actually _use_ a C-B, and anything over that could do some serious damage, and you’re new to this whole thing as it is,” Fox said.

 _Understandable,_ Locus thought, looking back at the far wall.

“Well, I can see you’re itching to try it out, so give it a go,” Fox said, taking a few steps back to put her a good distance apart from him.

Locus glanced over at her, then back at the shield, suddenly feeling much less confident than he had when she’d been right by his side. He took a deep breath and looked down at his hands, forming them into fists.

“Lightly,” Fox reminded.

Locus nodded, braced himself, then gently rapped his knuckles together. There was a whirring sound, then a crackle, and the shield jerked back ever so slightly. Across the room, one of the huge mirrors that lined the wall vibrated and cracked.

“And _that_ is a ten-percent C-B,” Fox declared. “Excellent work!”

Locus stared at the cracked mirror for a moment, then looked back at her. “Is that it?”

“Well, for now, yeah. You can unlock the shield and retract it,” Fox replied. Then she turned towards Kimball and Wash and gave them a thumbs up.

Locus turned and did as she asked, holding the retracted shield out to her when he was done. She took it from him and holstered it on her hip, then gestured for him to follow her as she walked back towards the others.

“So? What did you think?” Fox asked as she got close to Wash and Kimball.

Kimball didn’t answer right away, and instead looked over at Locus. And because she and Wash had put their helmets back on, he couldn’t tell what either of them was thinking. “It ran smoothly,” she said slowly.

“Buuut?”

“But nothing,” Kimball said, straightening up and looking over at Fox. “It went smoothly. You did well. I take it you’re finished for the day?”

Fox nodded, but there was something about how she held herself that made her seem like she doubted what Kimball had said. “We are.”

“Alright. I want that shield with you at all times unless we discuss it prior,” Kimball replied.

“I figured as much. It will be,” Fox said.

Kimball simply nodded. “Well, this was...interesting. But I have work to do, and Washington has a patrol to catch.”

“Well, then we’ll be seeing you,” Fox said.

Kimball looked over at Wash, who gave her a nod, then the two of them turned and headed on their way.

Locus watched them go, trying to ignore the ache in his muscles, and looked over when Fox tapped the side of her chin. “Is something wrong?” he asked after a moment.

“I think something’s up,” she said softly, looking up at him. Then she shook her head. “It could just be nothing though. Maybe I’m just seeing things.”

Locus wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so he simply fell silent.

That silence lasted for almost a minute before Fox finally shook her head and said, “we’ll figure it out,” before crouching in front of her laptop, clicking a few things, then closing it and standing with it tucked under her arm. She looked at him for a moment, head tilted slightly, then said, “come on. You look exhausted. You need some rest.” Then she jerked her head in the direction of the training room exit, and started off.

Locus watched her go for a moment, wondering what she could have seen that would prompt such a quick change of her mood, then shook it off and hurried after her as quickly as his tired body would allow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT: Changed Fox's age after someone in the RVB discord did some math. Which I try not to do. Kudos to them. I'm still throwing some headcannons around, specifically with everyone on Chorus' ages, but like. Whatever. If RT ever comes out with an actual list of ages, then I'll set myself on fire, but until then, it's free game.
> 
> As we get closer and closer to the main arc, I find myself getting more and more anxious when I post chapters. I know it's impossible to be a perfect writer, especially since this is my first major public work, but I still worry. I've received so many sweet and awesome comments since I started this thing, and I can't express how much I appreciate them. You guys keep me going, you really do, and your comments give me the courage to keep posting, even when I doubt myself. Thank you. <3
> 
> So these next two chapters are going to be largely focused on a) moving the plot forward into the primary arc, and b) establishing Fox with the other characters, because we really haven’t seen her interact with either of the teams that much. Also 20% more Grey in the next chapter. Yay! The chapters are also probably going to get longer. This chapter and the next chapter were actually originally one huge thing, but uh. I didn’t wanna make you guys read all that. Plus the longer the chapter, the more art I feel obligated to make. So….
> 
> Also expect time skips. This chapter had a few, and as they’re frustrating to have, it’s difficult to keep the plot moving when you go day-by-day in the events of the story. I promise I’ll try to keep the transitions smooth, but I’m hardly a professional writer, so it definitely won’t be perfect. Oh whale.
> 
> It’s tough not to focus on a few familiar characters when you have SUCH a large cast. I know we haven’t seen anything from the Lieutenants’ perspectives yet. We will eventually. 
> 
> Fox calling Sarge “Pops” can be interpreted two ways. She’s either calling him a shortened version of the word “poppy” (which according to Pantone, is very close to the color of Sarge’s armor), or “dad” (which can be either sarcastic or with fondness.) It’s up to you to decide which you like more, because I like both =w=;
> 
> *pats Locus’ head* gotta work on those social skills, buddy.  
> I’m white as they come so I’m looking at lovely ladies like Lucy Liu and Michelle Yeoh (and like a thousand others) for reference on how the fuck Fox would age. She’s got a few lines on her face, but it’s like Locus said, the lighting down where his cell is ain’t that great.  
> Also I headcannon that he and Felix caught the very very back end of the Great War. Because they looked hella young in the Merc Trilogy. Like mid-twenties, early thirties. There’s also no actual timeline for how long they were on Chorus, or how long they worked with Siris. So I’m spitballing. With my luck, new info will come up and I’ll look like a dummy. Oh well.
> 
> Tucker does NOT trust Locus. One bit. For obvious reasons. But also mostly bc he fucked with Wash and the rest of his team. You don’t mess with turquoise dad’s babies, bug man. 
> 
>  
> 
> This shit takes place 500 years in the future you cannot tell me they don’t have way better medical tech than we do. What’s that? You broke a bone? Cool we have medical laser superglue for that, hold still for five seconds. There, you’re fixed. Go home.  
> Ok listen I just really like Jensen and don’t want her to suffer ok. Let the girl walk. 
> 
> Doc How Could You There Are No Neutral Teams Only Red And Blue
> 
> That’s not how physics work but who caaaares Halo isn’t reaaaaaaal  
> Also faster than the speed of sound (AKA Mach 1) is 767.269 MPH. You DO NOT want to be hit by something that fast. It would scatter you like a bunch of grapes dropped off of a ten-story building. Why Fox programmed the shield to do that is beyond me. Then again, she’s extra as fuck, so whatever.
> 
> Also there is a very legitimate reason why Locus learns to use that shield. But it’s not gonna present itself right away. Just be out on the lookout for it. You’ll definitely know why when you see it ;)
> 
> Promethian vision, you black and green motherfucker.
> 
> Something’s up. But it’s not Fox. She’s waaaay down there. Look at how small she is.


	14. What’s In a Name?

Kimball looked up when Grey stepped into her office, a coffee mug with the words “a doctor a day keeps an apple away, if you throw it hard enough” in her hands, and several pencils shoved through her bun. She couldn’t help but quirk a small smile at the sight.

“I take it this must be pre-tty important if you’re pulling me away from my _lovely_ research,” Grey sang, setting her mug down on the edge of Kimball’s desk.

“Actually, it’s...more of a hunch,” Kimball replied, growing serious and looking away.

“Oh boy. Sit back and tell me all of your woes, sweetie,” Grey said, shifting her weight.

“Last month, when Fox was calibrating her shield so Locus could use it, she mentioned that she was forty-four years old. But when she first arrived here, and we learned her real name, I did some digging-- just basic internet searches --and Annita Rosenblum should only be thirty-eight. I tried to brush it off, but I can’t stop thinking about it,” Kimball explained.

“So she lied about her age, people do that all the time,” Grey said dismissively, waving a hand. “Lord knows _I_ owned a few fake ID’s back in the day.”

“But why would she do something like that? You know her better than I do. Have you noticed anything else that seems off?”

Grey shrugged. “Well, she’s been hanging out with the Reds and Blues more. Specifically the Reds. Though that might be because Sarge has been trying to get her to join their team.”

“Anything out of the _ordinary?”_

“Well, she _has_ been a bit more hesitant to approach you. Though that might just be her trauma acting up and making her wary of authority. We both know what she went through with Charon.”

Kimball sighed, staring at Grey’s mug. “It just seems so weird.”

“You must not think it’s too much of a problem, since you upgraded the amount of time Fox and Locus spend together from six hours to twelve at the start of the month. Not to mention that you’ve essentially allowed him free range of headquarters as long as Fox or one of the Reds and Blues is within reach. He’s practically assimilated at this point,” Grey said.

“That has nothing to do with this. He’s shown significant improvement, both in his levels of cooperation, and in how he interacts with my men. It’s _Fox_ that I’m worried about,” Kimball replied.

“I’m starting to think that you trust _him_ more than _Fox!_ ” Grey laughed.

Kimball blinked, then sat back with a frown. “I don’t know. Back when I first met her, her intentions seemed clear. She wanted revenge on Hargrove. But after this, I’m not so sure _what_ she wants. What else could she be hiding?”

“Sweetie, I get that it’s been a rough time since...Felix. And I know that she’s pretty charismatic and talkative, and a bit of a jackass, just like he was, but they’re not the same person,” Grey said, fixing her in a meaningful look.

Kimball sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I know. I know that. And I know that we wouldn’t have gotten this far with Locus if it wasn’t for her. I just…”

“I think maybe you need to take a break,” Grey suggested. “You’re cooped up in this office every day. And at the end of the week, when you’re refreshed and have had some time to think, go talk to Fox about it.”

Kimball started to give her a look, then bit her lip, realizing she was right. She _was_ in her office a lot. Even _Carolina_ had pointed it out a few days ago. “You’re right,” she sighed.

“I know I’m right. I’m the smartest person on this planet, and I’m a doctor,” Grey said, amusedly. And then, in a more sincere voice, added, “ _and_ I’m your friend. So as your friend, I’m going to have to kindly shoo you out of here to get some fresh air for once in a damned while.”

Kimball raised an eyebrow at her.

“Well! Come on. Up, up!” Grey exclaimed, accentuating her words with shooing hand gestures.

Kimball smiled and shook her head, then rose out of her seat, walking around her desk.

 _“There_ we go. Isn’t that better?” Grey asked.

Kimball rolled her eyes. “Absolutely.”

Grey gave her an equally sarcastic smile, and said, “then my work here is done!” And then she picked up her mug and turned, heading for the door.

“Grey?”

Grey paused, mid-step, and looked back over her shoulder. “Hmmm?”

Kimball glanced away, then back at her. “Could you...keep an eye on Fox for me? I just have to be sure.”

Grey let out a dramatic sigh. “Oh, _alright._ Shouldn’t be too hard today, since both of them were in the lab with me when you called me up.”

“Thank you,” Kimball said, and meant it.

Grey simply gave her a salute with her coffee mug, then headed out the door.

Kimball watched her go, having half a mind to sit back down and continue her work. But Grey was right. She was in here too much, and it was starting to burn her out. So, with a slight shake of her head, she picked her helmet up off of her desk and put it on. Maybe she could catch Carolina and join her on patrol? That sounded nice.

 

* * *

 

“I wonder what that was all about?” Fox mused, staring at the door Grey had just bolted out of.

“Maybe something in the med bay?” Locus suggested. “She _did_ leave Doc in charge.”

Fox snickered. “Jesus, you are just a _bucket_ of salt today.”

“The man tried to prescribe _antibiotics_ to counter the soreness from that shield calibration,” Locus replied flatly. “He shouldn’t have a medical license.”

“He does his best. But between you and me, I don’t think he actually _does_ ,” Fox replied, looking back at the tools scattered across the workbench in front of her.

Locus followed her gaze, noting that Grey had managed to get what looked like halfway through the upgrade she had been constructing when he and Fox had walked in earlier. “Are you going to try to finish that?”

Fox sighed. “I probably should. Save her the work later.” She picked up one of the tools and started to mess with the upgrade, then let out a huff suddenly. “This stupid thing’s cameras keep fucking with the focal distance,” she muttered, then reached up and pulled her helmet off.

For a moment, Locus couldn’t help but stare. He had only ever seen Fox’s face twice, once when she took her helmet off down by his cell, and then again two days later after Kimball had sent them out on patrol as a test run, and it had stormed, and Fox had somehow managed to get mud on one of the helmet’s cameras. Both times, her hair had been black. However, now, it was a vibrant copper color.

 _You should probably say something. That’s the right thing to do, right?_ “You changed your hair,” he said lamely. _Nevermind. Next time just keep your mouth shut._

Fox gave him a lopsided grin and patted the side of her headband. “You like it? Donut hooked me up with some dye a few weeks ago.” She said. “It was a pain to color it though because we had to get creative bleaching it. Grey threatened to chop Donut and I up and feed us to Grif if she caught us using her peroxide,” Fox said with a sly smile. “ _Apparently_ she already has enough trouble with Wash pulling the same thing as it is.”

 _So_ **_that’s_ ** _how he gets it that blonde._ “I see,” Locus said, mildly amused.

“Anyways, this upgrade isn’t going to make itself. I guess,” Fox sighed, her smile fading. She looked up at him. “You eat lunch yet? Why don’t you go grab something?”

“I’m fine,” Locus replied. He really wasn’t that hungry anyways.

“Suit yourself. I’ve got snack bars hidden in one of the drawers down here anyways if you change your mind but don’t wanna go upstairs,” Fox said.

Locus didn’t say anything, and instead watched her work for a few minutes, quickly growing bored. “Is there anything I can help with?”

“Only if you think I’m ready to trust you with my life,” Fox replied without looking up, a smile appearing on her face.

“What do you mean?” Locus asked, tilting his head slightly.

“Meaning there’s a box full of really fragile recycled energy cores over there on that shelf,” Fox said, looking up and pointing at the object in mention, “and it would be super helpful if you brought it over here. _But_ , if you drop it, Grey will probably skin me alive and wear me as a _very_ tiny winter coat.”

Locus shook his head slightly at that, but walked over and retrieved the box. It was lighter than he had been expecting, but everything in it that he could see looked _very_ expensive. He set it down across from Fox.

 _“Perfect,”_ Fox said, glancing up when he did so.

“Anything else?”

“Take a load off? Relax? You’ve been working hard these past few weeks.”

Locus gave her an annoyed look that he knew she couldn’t see. “To _do,_ Fox.”

“Fuck, I don’t know. You’re grown. You can make your own choices. Go find Grif or Lopez or Caboose and see if they want your help.”

Locus thought about that for a moment, then decided it wasn’t worth the headache. Most of the repairs had been done by now, with only small issues left to take care of. With a sigh, he crossed his arms and looked over at Fox again. Fox, however, either didn’t notice, or wasn’t interested in engaging, as she kept her nose buried in her work.

So Locus walked around the lab a bit, taking a look at all the things her and Grey had been working on in the past month. Some of them looked interesting, but most of it, especially the blueprints, which were covered in chicken-scratch handwriting, he didn’t understand. Eventually he found his way back to Fox, who was digging through the box he had brought her.

 _“There_ you are, you little shit,” Fox exclaimed, pulling out a small, round core.

Locus stopped and watched her for a bit, arms crossed, leaning against the wall while she installed the core in the upgrade. He was just about to go and see if he could find some _actual_ work to do, when Fox spoke up.

“Y’know, you’ve been doing really good.”

Locus opted for silence, as he didn’t feel like he could give her a good response.

“When Kimball first agreed to this, she was pretty reluctant. I don’t think she thought we’d get very far. But she’s started to trust you, which is...surprising, and also pretty cool.” There was a clicking sound as Fox put the core in place, then she sat back and looked over at him. “And if _she’s_ trusting you, then I probably should too.”

Locus tilted his head at her, confused. Up until right this second, he was under the impression that there was _some_ level of mutual trust between the two of them, however thin it might be. Clearly, he had been wrong about that. “What do you mean?”

Fox sighed and set her tools down, looking away. “You remember, a few weeks ago, I said ‘Matsukaze Matter’, and you asked what it meant?”

Locus nodded, suddenly very unsure if he wanted to hear whatever Fox had to say in regards to that.

“It’s…a family saying. Something my father used to tell me whenever something happened in our family. Like if one of our cars got towed, or the WiFi went down, or him and my mother had an argument. It just meant that it was something that our family needed to take care of.”

And suddenly, Locus found himself trying to fit a Jenga block into a tabletop puzzle. _None_ of what Fox was saying made sense. “Your name is Annita Rosenblum,” he said, _isn’t it?_

And Fox took a deep breath, looked him in the eye, like she could see through his helmet, and said, “No.”

And for a moment, the dull buzz of the overhead fluorescent lights and the whirr of the ventilation system were the only sounds that filled the lab.

And Locus’ thoughts were going a thousand miles a minute and he couldn’t focus on just one and none of it added up but all of it added up and how she had mentioned Emblem and known so much about it and how she managed to get his file and-- “Who are you?” he asked, unable to keep the tension out of his voice.

“Pepper,” Fox said. “Pepper Matsukaze. My father created the program that protects the U.N.S.C. database.”

And now Locus could feel a headache coming on, and he squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head away, thinking hard, trying to keep himself composed. “Why did you lie?” he asked, looking back at her.

“Because the CEO of Emblem is going to hand the company over to me when he retires,” Fox replied. She shook her head and bit her lip. “Annita Rosenblum was an alias that I got a buddy of mine, General Sachs, to come up with so that I could be a corpsman during the war. I wanted to _help._ But I’m...I’m so fucking high-profile that it never would have worked! They never would have let me! So I worked something out with the U.N.S.C. so that I could study biomechanical engineering through their pipeline under Doctor Howard Manning under the guise that I was just furthering my college education. I worked out the details with him when I got up there, and the U.N.S.C. was none the wiser,” Fox waved her hand dismissively, her shoulders falling slightly. “Annie was also supposed to be studying under Manning, but wanted to help out in the war. And so she, AKA _I_ , left and did so, getting sent to New Mombasa. After that, I guess I had become pretty well-known, since I saved a number of people and also studied under one of the best biomechanical engineers of all time, because Charon offered me a leadership position on one of their expeditions. It was only meant to last five years, and since I was supposed to be with Manning for twelve, I figured it would work out.”

Fox shook her head, a bitter expression on her face. “I was so _naive._ Innocent people are dead, and it’s my _fault.”_ She let out a frustrated sigh and pulled her hair band off of her head, fidgeting with it. “But that’s the truth. The whole thing. You asked me why I lied? It’s because I wasn’t sure who I could trust. If the U.N.S.C. figured out I’ve been lying to them, I’d be cut off from Emblem and thrown in a maximum security prison, just because of what I know. Or _worse,_ if Hargrove figured out who I was, he could try to use me to gain access to that database as leverage against the U.N.S.C. _”_

She ran a hand through her hair, a worried expression on her face. “And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you right away. You deserved better. I know it’s been hard enough trusting me as it is, and now I’ve turned out to be...the same person but with a different name and with _way_ more actual authority and a much higher profile than you actually thought.” She looked back at him. “I get it if you don’t want to trust me, or be around me anymore. I don’t blame you. But I kept all this quiet because I needed to know you and the others were the right kind of people before I said anything.”

And for a while, all Locus could do was stare at the floor as he put the puzzle pieces together. The more he thought about it, the more it made sense. Fox had created a kill code to take down CORA. She couldn’t have known how to do that without some understanding of how AI’s worked. It had been right there, staring him in the face the whole time, and he’d never even seen it.

And now he realized he’d never known her at all, and everything she’d ever said before was just another part of her cover. Everything but her desire to stop Charon. That was the only thing that had held through. The only definitive truth she’d given him. But it couldn’t be her only endgame. She’d held her cover this long. She’d fooled the _U.N.S.C._ There had to be something else in mind, right?

“What’s your endgame?” he asked.

Fox blinked, looking confused. “What do you mean?”

“Why are you here? Why get Kimball to let you work with me? Why not just run?”

Fox’s expression hardened. “Because I made a mess, and I need to clean it up. And I know _how_ to. But I need people to help me. Because this?” She gestured vaguely in the air beside her head. “This whole thing is bigger than what you and Kimball and the Reds and Blues have seen here on Chorus. It’s bigger than what Epsilon broadcasted. It’s bigger than _all_ of us. Hargrove has friends in the U.N.S.C., and they are going to let him wash his hands of any guilt if something isn’t done. And he’s going to start by erasing any witnesses to _any_ of the crimes he’s committed that were highlighted in that transmission. _Thousands_ of lives. And we’re at the top of his list.”

“And where do I come into all of this?” Locus asked. Because he was here with her for a reason. He had to be.

“You’ve been through some shit, and I wanna help you deal with it. I never lied to you about that,” Fox replied. “But you also know Charon. And you know the U.N.S.C. Better than any of these guys do, anyways. You and I both saw the shit they pulled during the war. We know what we’re up against. We know they’re not our friends.”

And Locus took a deep breath. Because she was right. Because the U.N.S.C. had turned their backs when they were needed dozens of time. Chorus was just one example. And he was suddenly back in an interrogation room with a U.N.S.C. official treating him like a criminal simply because he’d _survived._ “That’s the truth?” he asked. He could handle that if it was.

“It is,” Fox said, nodding.

“Good.” Locus looked away, still not sure how he felt about all of this. All of it, in the end, added up. And her reasoning for keeping it quiet made sense. If Hargrove got his hands on the sort of information the database held, it would be catastrophic. He might never see trial.

“So...are we okay?” Fox asked slowly. “I know it’s kind of a dick move to ask, but…I like knowing where I stand with people.”

Fox...for better or for worse, had gotten him far more freedom than he would have ever earned on his own. And she listened when no one else did. And as heavy as this news was, he couldn’t deny that she was really the only person he had looking out for him. And that despite everything, she still seemed to be the same naive, sincere, fidgety person he had met weeks ago. So Locus met her gaze, and said, “you can’t ever do something like this again, understand?”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” Fox replied with a small smile. “I hate lying as it is. Too much to remember.”

“Good,” Locus said with a nod. “Then we’re still on even terms.”

Fox let out a sigh of relief that seemed to slacken her whole body. “Phew. Okay. Thank you. Awesome. Great.”

“What are you going to do now?” Locus asked before she got too comfortable.

“Pardon?”

“The others don’t know any of this.”

Fox looked away, tapping the side of her chin. “I think...I’ll tell them soon. I just need a little more time to figure out how I want to do it.”

“Good,” Locus replied. It was the right thing to do. And the others deserved to know.

Fox ran a hand through her hair and looked over at her helmet tiredly. “Well, all that stress worked up an appetite,” she said with a half-hearted smile. “Wanna go grab something to eat?”

Locus sighed, thinking about it for a minute. It’s not like there was anything better to do. “Let’s go.”

He watched as Fox stood and pulled her hair back behind her headband before putting her helmet back on, then joined her as she turned and walked out of the lab.

Neither of them noticed the camera sitting in the corner, the red light indicating that it was recording flashing on and off.

 

* * *

 

“Miss Fox! Miss Fox!” Caboose exclaimed, jumping in the air and waving when he saw Fox round the corner.

Fox turned and noticed him, giving him a wave and walking over. “Hi, Caboose! Are you about to head out on patrol?”

“Uh-huh!” Caboose replied, nodding. “Are you gonna come with us?”

“I was thinking about it. Just had lunch. It’s not like we have anything better to do,” Fox said. “Is that okay?”

“YES! Oh this is gonna be so _awesome!”_ Caboose shouted. Then he turned when he saw Tucker walk around the corner with Palomo and Andersmith in tow. “Tucker! Miss Fox is gonna join us on patrol! It’s gonna be so much fun!”

Tucker stopped short of him, then looked over at Fox. Caboose couldn’t help but wonder if Tucker was just being shy and hiding his excitement. Because he didn’t look very excited. So yeah, he was probably just hiding it.

“Where’s Locus?” Tucker asked.

“Right here,” Locus replied, seeming to melt out of the shadows and startling Palomo, who let out a shriek.

Fox snickered and turned her head away, hands on her hips. It took her a moment to regain her composure before she looked back at Locus and said, “maybe you should keep the disappearing-reappearing acts to a minimum, yeah?”

“Hi Mister Locust!” Caboose greeted. “Are you coming with us too?”

Tucker shot him a look. “Why the fuck would you ask that?” he hissed.

“That was the intention,” Locus replied, glancing over at Tucker, but clearly not taking his comment to heart.

Caboose grinned wide under his helmet. “Yes! This is gonna be so much fun!” Now there were _two_ _more_ friends on his patrol! _Oh boy!_

“Fun is an _interesting_ word for this,” Palomo muttered, still sore from being taken by surprise.

“Come on, Palomo. Captain Caboose is right, this will be an excellent team-building exercise for all of us!” Andersmith replied.

“Can we just…” Tucker trailed off and gestured vaguely, _“go?_ The other patrol is waiting for us to replace them.” He shook his head, then walked past, heading towards the cave entrance.

Caboose looked back to make sure that Fox and Locus were with them, then turned and caught up with Tucker, shouting, “hey, wait up!”

The valley was bathed in warm light as the sun, having reached its peak, began to descend behind the mountains. The patrol that they had replaced seemed relieved to go back inside headquarters, and Caboose quickly found out why. It was _really_ hot out. At least the temperature regulators in his armor kept him pretty cool, and his helmet had a super nifty built-in visor so he didn’t have to squint so much. That was nice.

“Hey Miss Fox?”

“What’s up, Caboose?”

“Do you have four eyes?”

“...No?”

“Because you’ve got two visors on your helmet, and I just thought that maybe you were like an alien or something.”

“Oh, no, Caboose. Those are just...decorations? I don’t actually see out of them.”

“Whaaat? Really? But then how _do_ you see?”

“There are cameras built into the helmet.”

“Whoaaaah,” Caboose gasped. “That’s soo _cool!”_ Then he looked over at Locus. “Do _you_ have cameras in _your_ helmet?”

Locus looked over at him and seemed to consider his question for a moment, then said, “yes.”

“Huh,” Andersmith said, looking over at them. “Y’know, I was actually wondering that myself. That _is_ pretty cool.”

“I always thought it was like a one-way mirror sort of deal,” Palomo said, nodding at Fox.

“How the fuck would _that_ work? Their helmets are fucking solid!” Tucker snapped.

“Aw, leave the kid alone, Tucker,” Fox said.

 _“He’s_ not a kid. _I_ know what a _kid_ looks like. I _have_ one,” Tucker scoffed.

“You have a kid?” Fox asked.

“Yeah! Wanna see him?” Tucker asked, his demeanor suddenly shifting, a photograph already in his hand.

“Sure,” Fox chuckled, taking the photo when he handed it to her. “Which one is yours? And wow, a Sangheili coach? How cool is that?”

“Oh no, that’s him,” Tucker said.

Fox stared at the photo, then slowly looked up at Tucker. “Come again?”

Tucker nodded at the photo in her hand and said with pride in his voice, “the alien. That’s my kid. His name’s Junior.”

“Yeah, he was really small at first, but then he got really big, and Tucker was mad at first because he didn’t wanna be short, but now he’s okay,” Caboose added.

Fox stared at Tucker, then looked back at the photo, then back at Tucker, and said, “explain. Now.”

Tucker laughed. “I sorta...got him when I got my sword. He was a bit of a surprise, but it turned out that him and the sword were sort of a ‘buy one, get one free’ sort of deal.”

And Caboose noticed how Fox and Locus exchanged a look, and wondered if they were both thinking about how cool Junior was.

“Wait, but you’re a...guy,” Fox said slowly. “So how the _fuck…?”_

“Was it like some alien magic or something?” Palomo asked.

“Pssh, _no!_ I don’t think the aliens even _are_ magic,” Tucker replied. “I just had the right equipment back then, if you know what I mean.”

Fox was silent for a moment, then said, “ohhh. _Ohhhhh._ Okay. Phew.” She looked over at Locus. _“That_ would’ve been weird.”

“Aww but babies are so much _fun!”_ Caboose exclaimed. “You get to teach them how to walk, and say bad words when their parents aren’t around (that’s what Kai did,) and how to hold a spoon…”

“Kai did _what_ now?” Tucker asked.

“What? No, I mean...uh...” Caboose realized he had absolutely nothing to say to defend his friend, so instead he just turned away and said, “nothing.”

He heard Tucker suck in a deep breath, but then Fox said, “aw, just let it go, Tucker. He was gonna learn them eventually.”

Caboose cautiously looked over his shoulder at the others, and when he saw that Tucker didn’t look as mad, turned back to face him. He listened to them talk for a little bit, watching the sun sink lower in the sky, then eventually got bored and piped up, “hey Mister Locust, since you have a cool sword, and Tucker has a cool sword, does that mean that you’re on Blue Team too?”

Locus looked over at him, then at Tucker, then at Fox. But before he could reply, Tucker said, “dude, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t _get_ a team.”

“But why not?” Caboose asked. It didn’t make sense. Everyone else had a team. He had Blue Team. The Reds had their team. All of Kimball’s men were on _her_ team. Come to think of it, neither Locus _or_ Fox had a team. It was kinda sad to think about. It wasn’t fair that they were getting left out.

“Uh, because he tried to kill us, that’s why,” Tucker replied.

“Well yeah, but so did Wash. Kinda,” Caboose replied. “And we still let _him_ be on our team.”

“Wait, _Wash_ tried to kill you guys?” Fox asked.

“Yeah, back then he was kind of an asshole,” Tucker replied, looking at her. Then quickly added, “well, _more_ of an asshole.”

“Oh that’s just _cute,”_ Fox said with a smile in her voice.

“Yeah, he wasn’t so nice back then. And he tried to kidnap Church. We got him back though,” Caboose said.

“Well, I’m certainly glad that he’s on our side,” Andersmith piped up. “Seeing the way _he_ fights, I’d hate to be his enemy.”

“Even though he sometimes acts like we are during training,” Palomo muttered.

“So does that mean that Miss Fox is on our team?” Caboose asked. Tucker never said anything about _her._

Fox made a hesitant sound, then said, “actually...I don’t really think I fit in with either team.”

“Aw, sure you do!” Caboose said. That was such a silly thing for her to say! She fit in _perfect_ with Blue Team! She was sarcastic like Tucker, and tough like Wash, and good at fighting like Carolina, and smart like Church-- Caboose frowned under his helmet and looked down at the ground. “We’ve got an open spot anyways,” he said quietly.

“Aw...hey, Caboose. It’s not…” Fox looked away, fidgeting. “It’s not that I don’t _want_ to be on your team. I just don’t...I haven’t been here long enough to decide which team I should be _on._ ” She looked back at him, crossing her arms. “And, you know, I had a team of my own once, and they’re gone now. And now I’m around all these people, and I have to adjust to not being alone anymore. It’ll just take a bit of time, is all.”

“Okay,” Caboose said, still upset.

To his left, Tucker sighed, and looked back in the direction of headquarters. “Time’s almost up. Another patrol should be heading to replace us in a few minutes.”

“At least we didn’t run into any pirates. That was good,” Andersmith offered.

“Oh hey, the other patrol’s on their way over,” Fox said. “Perfect timing!”

Caboose just sighed sadly and watched as the group of soldiers approached them, looking on idly as Tucker and the others started heading in the direction of headquarters.

Locus walked past, tailing after Fox, then stopped and looked back at him, seeming to think for a moment before saying, “I’m sorry about your friend.” Then he turned and continued on his way.

Caboose stared after him, then quietly said, “yeah, me too,” before hurrying to catch up.

 

* * *

 

Kimball stared down at the valley, listening to the wind rustle the trees behind her and feeling it push against her back. “This is a really good spot. You said you found it on patrol?” she asked after a moment, looking over at Carolina.

“A while ago, yes,” Carolina replied, nodding her head. “There are plenty of places up on these cliffs that you can look into the valley, but this is the only spot to my knowledge that lets you see pretty much the whole thing.” She fell silent after that and looked out over the jungle.

Kimball did the same for a minute, eyes following the patrols in the valley below. The patrols. Right. She didn’t just come out here to socialize. Carolina was leading a patrol.

Kimball looked over towards where Donut and the two other soldiers that had accompanied them had stopped, then back at Carolina. “I suppose we should keep moving.”

“Wait, are you staying with us for the whole patrol?” Carolina asked, looking back at her.

“I have nothing else to do,” Kimball replied. “Besides, Grey got on my case about holing up in my office every day.”

“Did she, now?” Carolina asked with amusement in her voice. “Well, then I guess you’d better come with us.” She turned and headed back to the trail, nodding at Donut for him to get the others moving.

Kimball followed, catching up and matching Carolina’s pace at the front of the patrol. “We should keep an eye on that spot in case the pirates return. If they find it, it’ll give them a much higher advantage over us than they did before.”

“You’re worried that they’ll use that spot to become familiar with patrol schedules?” Carolina asked.

“I don’t know. There hasn’t been any activity that we know of from them. It’s like they just vanished,” Kimball replied. “Still, it pays to be prepared.” She fell silent for a while, listening to the banter of the three soldiers behind her, picking out Donut’s voice with ease. It sounded like he was telling some sort of story.

“So, the full day, huh?” Carolina asked suddenly, pulling Kimball out of her head.

“Sorry?”

Carolina looked over at her. “With Fox and Locus. They have the full day together.”

Kimball blinked. “We discussed this a week ago when I made the decision,” she said confusedly. She didn’t understand why Carolina had brought it up.

“I know.”

“Do you have a problem with it? Did something happen?”

Carolina shook her head. “No, no. It’s just...something to talk about, you know?”

“I see…” Kimball replied, still not convinced. Carolina wasn’t a terribly quiet person, but it was still unlike her to bring up something so serious just for the sake of conversation. “And how have things been going, ever since the choice was made?”

Carolina shrugged. “At this point, it doesn’t seem like the men mind having him around. There’s still obvious tension, but I doubt that will ever fully go away, considering the circumstances.”

Kimball nodded in understanding. Of course she hadn’t expected her men to be completely happy about the idea of Locus being given as much of a leash as he had been. After everything he’d done, it made sense. But as long as none of her men acted on their animosity towards him, there wouldn’t be a problem. She looked back over at Carolina, noticing with some surprise that the other woman was staring at the ground, appearing deep in thought. “Carolina?”

Carolina looked over at her, but didn’t respond immediately. Kimball was just beginning to get the sense that something was wrong when the other woman spoke up. “What comes next after this?”

“What do you mean?” Kimball asked.

“What I mean is that...I trust you,” Carolina replied, struggling with the words slightly. “But I want to know if what comes next could affect the Reds and Blues.”

“You mean with Fox and Locus?”

Carolina nodded. “I’ll admit, I’ve grown to trust Fox more and more with time. But I still can’t help but feel that she’s not telling us everything. Like there’s a bigger picture that we’re not seeing.”

Kimball knew exactly how she felt.

“And Locus. I know that he’s repeatedly proven at this point that he’s going to cooperate, but he fooled us before. And in the state we’re in, I don’t think _any_ of us will come out in one piece if he does it again.”

Kimball stared at Carolina, surprised. “You really care about seeing this through, don’t you, Carolina?”

Carolina looked over at her, and was silent for a moment before saying, “I haven’t had many chances to do right by other people. So yes, I want to see this through. I want to make sure that everyone turns out okay this time.” And she looked away quickly after that, and Kimball could feel the weight of an untold story looming over the two of them like an old tree leaning over a river, its roots tugging out of the ground.

And in the silence, Kimball watched her, looking on as shafts of the sun’s dying light cut through the trees and illuminated her armor in an orange glow, reflecting like starlight off of her visor. “We will be,” she said finally, and Carolina looked over at her. “We’re all getting out of this one. I’m sure of it.”

“Yeah, Carolina! You know we’re all tough as nails anyways!”

Kimball felt herself jump as Donut suddenly spoke up directly behind her, and she quickly looked over her shoulder and glared at the Marine. “Were you _eavesdropping?_ ”

“Guilty as charged,” Donut replied.

Behind him, Kimball caught sight of the other two of her men, who looked just as guilty. Great. “So how much of that did you hear?”

“Eh...most of it.”

Carolina sighed, sounding mildly annoyed. “That was a private conversation, Donut.”

“I know,” Donut replied. “I didn’t _mean_ to hear what you guys were talking about. Me, Tate, and Lawrence just finished our conversation and it got really quiet.”

Kimball looked over exasperatedly as Donut matched her and Carolina’s pace, falling into step between the two of them.

“Don’t worry, though. My lips are _zipped!_ ” Donut mimed zipping his mouth shut over his helmet.

“Well, since all of you were listening, how about you all tell me your two cents?” Kimball asked, looking back over her shoulder at Tate and Lawrence.

“Ma’am?” Lawrence asked.

“Wait, about how things are going to turn out, or about Locus?” Tate asked.

“Either,” Kimball sighed.

“Well, I don’t know how things are going to turn out, ma’am, but I try to be an optimist,” Lawrence replied.

“As you should!” Donut exclaimed cheerfully, looking back and giving Lawrence an approving nod.

“I’m more of a realist, personally,” Tate said.

“Aw, _boo,_ ” Donut replied.

“Hey, I didn’t say that I think we’re going to die, did I?” Tate said defensively.

Kimball rolled her eyes and listened to the crunch of dead leaves and twigs underfoot for a moment before asking, “and what about Locus?”

No one said anything.

Kimball looked back over her shoulder and noted how uneasy both Tate and Lawrence looked. “He’s not giving you any trouble, is he?”

“Well...no,” Tate replied.

“He’s just really fucking creepy. If...if you’ll excuse my French, ma’am,” Lawrence added.

Kimball looked over when she heard Carolina let out a soft chuckle, and couldn’t help but let the corner of her mouth twitch upwards under her helmet at the forwardness of Lawrence’s response. “You’re excused.”

“He’s definitely chilled out more,” Donut spoke up, then snickered, “which might have something to do with Fox’s ‘mom voice.’”

“‘Mom voice?’” Kimball asked, looking at him.

“Yeah, that’s what she calls it when she gets all firm and serious. Apparently,” Donut replied, tilting his head. “Doc told me some _pretty_ funny stories about her using it.”

 _Oh,_ Kimball thought, exchanging a look with Carolina, who seemed equally surprised. “What do you mean he’s ‘chilled out more?’” she asked, looking back at Donut.

“Well…” Donut tilted his head upwards and tapped the foregrip of his gun absently in thought. “Earlier today, I spoke to Caboose, and _he_ said that Locus said he felt sorry about Church. And if that’s not chill, then I don’t know what is.”

Kimball blinked several times in surprise, then looked over at Carolina. “Did _you_ hear anything about this?”

Carolina shook her head. “I haven’t spoken to Caboose today.”

“Hmm…” Kimball said, and stared at the ground, watching her feet. “Well that’s interesting news, anyways.”

“Uh, he also helps out around headquarters a bit,” Tate added. “But you probably already knew that. He doesn’t talk to anyone really, also. Which I guess is...normal.”

“For him, anyways,” Lawrence agreed. “Still kinda creepy.”

“Er...if it’s alright for me to ask, ma’am, are you planning to just...not keep him locked up anymore?” Tate asked. “I mean, he’s out and about more and more. W-which isn’t a problem! I just--”

“It’s alright for you to ask,” Kimball replied, cutting Tate off before he had a chance to go off on a tangent. “And I’m not sure. Which is why Carolina and I were discussing it.”

“Oh. Alright. Sorry.”

Kimball looked back at him. “You have nothing to be sorry for. You have every right to be concerned about possible decisions that could affect you and your fellow men.”

Tate relaxed a little. “Yes ma’am.”

Kimball gave him a nod, then looked ahead at the trail. By now, the sun had sunken low, and the bright orange glow of its fading light had begun to dim. They would be heading back soon, she realized, and suddenly wished that the patrol would last longer. Despite all of the awkward conversation, she really had _enjoyed_ the time out of her office. _All the more reason to come back tomorrow,_ she decided, looking on as Carolina moved ahead of her and led them in the direction of the trail that would bring them back to headquarters.

For the rest of the walk, Kimball listened to the banter of Donut and her two men over the white noise of the wind sweeping through the trees. But she kept her eyes on Carolina, wondering what was going through the other woman’s head, and trying to pinpoint the moment in the past hour when she had decided she wasn’t interested in conversation any more. Kimball hoped it wasn’t her fault.

When they finally reached the mouth of the cave, Kimball was satisfied to see the next patrol waiting to switch out with them; Sarge at their head. She returned his enthusiastic salute, then turned and nodded at Donut and the others as they bid their farewells, watching as they dispersed before turning to face Carolina. “Well today was...different.”

Carolina seemed taken aback by this. “Different?”

“Different,” Kimball said with a nod.

“Was it...a _good_ different, at least?” Carolina asked, tilting her head slightly.

Now it was Kimball’s turn to be taken off-guard. “Well, considering we didn’t get attacked, _yes,_ ” she replied with a chuckle.

“Ah,” Carolina replied, and Kimball could have sworn she deflated a little.

“In all seriousness, this was a good change for me,” Kimball said quickly. “I’m in that office far too much for my own good.” She fell silent for a moment, unsure if she should continue. Then, giving herself a mental kick in the ass, added, “I think...if it’s alright, I’d like to join you on patrol for the rest of the week. I think it would be good for me.”

Carolina stared at her, then said, “that’s fine.”

 _Hell of a way to say ‘no,’_ Kimball thought, sighing inwardly at Carolina’s tone. Oh well. Maybe she was just tired. “Where are you off to?” she asked.

“I was going to have dinner. Have you eaten yet?” Carolina replied.

“No,” Kimball said, suddenly realizing how _hungry_ she was.

“Why don’t you join me?” Carolina asked, turning to leave.

“Are you sure?”

“I wouldn’t have offered if I wasn’t.”

 _Fair enough,_ Kimball thought. “Well then, Agent Carolina, lead the way.”

Carolina gave her a nod, and the two of them walked into headquarters side-by-side.

 

* * *

 

 _“Someone’s_ in a _mood!”_ Grey sang as she swept past Fox and set a mug of coffee down on the workbench next to her.

Fox looked up, confusion written on her face. “What?”

 _“You’re_ upset about something,” Grey said, sitting down across from her.

Fox held her in a scrutinizing gaze. “I’m fine.”

“And I’m a ring-tailed lemur,” Grey replied, taking a sip of her own coffee.

Fox sighed and closed her laptop. “It’s been a long week,” she admitted.

Grey allowed the corner of her mouth to twitch upwards into a half-smile. At least now Fox was being honest. She set her mug down and looked over at the materials that were spread out across the counter tops. “Your mood wouldn’t happen to be affected by that little dramatic reveal you gave Locus the other day, would it?” she asked, looking at Fox out of the corner of her eye.

Fox, who had been about to take a sip of her coffee, froze, and locked eyes with her, mug still held to her lips. She slowly lowered it and set it down on the table, moving like a dog who was cornered at the back of a dead-end alleyway, unsure whether to fight or run. “How do you know about that?” she asked, her voice tense and wary.

Grey laced her fingers together and rested them on the table, looking at Fox with a knowing smile. “Before the two of you had arrived, I was documenting some of the adjustments I was making to those biotics upgrades. After I left to speak with Kimball, I got a little sidetracked with some nonsense in the medical bay. When I came back at the end of the day, I realized that the camera’s battery was dead because I forgot to turn it off. After it was charged, I figured I’d go through the footage just to make sure that I’d gotten everything I needed to, and I came across the little conversation the two of you had.”

And by now the hackles on the back of Fox’s neck had risen, and she was wound up tighter than a spring. “And?” she asked through her teeth.

Grey leaned back, her smile fading. “Why did you keep that from all of us? Why haven’t you told anyone who you really are?”

And Fox looked away, appearing almost _guilty._ “It’s not safe.”

“And yet you just gave all that information away to a literal criminal.”

“I...It’s not like he could _do_ anything with it,” Fox replied.

Grey shrugged. “True, but it’s disheartening to know that you’ve been lying to us this whole time.”

And Fox made a face at that, and let go of the mug handle she had been gripping with whitened knuckles. “I didn’t want to,” she said softly, looking back at Grey. “Really. I didn’t. But I didn’t know--”

“If you could trust us,” Grey finished for her. She narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips, then said, “I understand. I’m not happy about it, but I understand.”

“Have you told anyone?” Fox asked with urgency in her voice.

Grey looked back at her, eyebrows raised. “Of course not! That’s your job, not mine!”

Fox clenched her jaw, her nerves showing on her face. “I wouldn’t know where to start,” she confessed.

“At the beginning,” Grey replied, waving her hand absently. Then she leaned forward. “These are good people here,” she said, softening her tone. “I know you’re afraid of what might happen if you come clean to everyone here, but they’ll be understanding.”

“It’s not about that,” Fox snapped, then seemed surprised by her own tone, and in a much calmer voice, added, “it’s about trust. It’s about knowing I can rely on you guys. And after what I went through with Charon, I can’t afford to take any risks.”

Grey watched her for a moment, then reached across the table and patted her hand. “I know,” she said. “But we’re not them. You’ve been through a lot, and it shows. But we all want the same thing here.”

And when Fox looked back at her, there was a new tiredness in her eyes. “You really want me to tell the others, don’t you?”

“I’m not going to force you,” Grey said, sitting back. “But it’s the right thing to do. And we both know it.”

Fox bit her lip and stared into her coffee. “How do you think they’ll take it?” she asked.

“They’ll probably be confused and upset,” Grey admitted. “This isn’t exactly side-column news, you know. But if you tell them _why_ you kept all this a secret, I’m sure they’ll be understanding.”

“Kimball trusted me,” Fox said bitterly. “I should’ve just--” she turned her head away with a huff. “I should have just told her about everything right away.”

“But you didn’t,” Grey said, earning her an annoyed look from Fox. “And Kimball probably won’t be too happy about this. But if we’re being completely honest with one another, I think she’ll understand where you’re coming from.”

Fox tilted her head to the side slightly, narrowing her eyes. “How do you mean?”

“By now you _have_ to know that Felix, Locus’ old partner, betrayed her, right?” Grey asked.

And Fox blinked, then she groaned and buried her face in her hands. “Oh my _god!”_  She dropped her hands into her lap and looked at Grey with a frown. “I’ve got to be the world’s _biggest_ asshole,” she said.

And Grey couldn’t help but smile. “No, I think Hargrove takes the lead in _that_ department. And then Locus and the pirates come in second. You might be in third, if it wasn’t for the fact that you obviously know that what you did was wrong.”

Fox tried and failed to force what might have been a smile onto her face, and gave up and looked away.

Grey allowed her to sit in silence for a moment. No doubt she needed time to process everything. Then she finally spoke up, her grin widening as she asked. “So did you really co-write a book with yourself?”

Fox stared at her, looking almost confused. “Wait. Wait, shit.” Her eyes got wide, and a very _real_ smile appeared on her face. _“Fuck._ I _did_ , didn’t I?”

Grey laughed, relieved that the mood was finally starting to brighten. “Well, both Annita Rosenblum _and_ Pepper Matsukaze are listed as authors next to Howard Manning. So I think so, yes.”

“Uh...in my defense, I needed the cred,” Fox admitted sheepishly. _“Both_ of...me...needed the cred.”

 _“Clearly_ ,” Grey said, nodding.

Fox looked away, her smile fading. She was silent for a moment, then spoke up. “Thank you,” she said, looking back at Grey. “I...I’ve been...scared, I guess? I was totally expecting to die on that moon, and then _boom_ , change of plans! Now I’m here! I haven’t had a whole lot of say in what’s happened to me in these past few years. And now suddenly I have actual agency and people to interact with and every choice I make affects them.” She sighed. “It’s weird. Y’know I’ve always considered myself a people person, but after being completely isolated for four years...it’s like riding a bike without training wheels for the first time.”

And Grey couldn’t help but be slightly taken aback by this. She had always considered Fox to be extremely sociable. In fact, she’d always thought that Fox had gotten on very well despite the period of isolation she had been forced to endure. In truth, if she hadn’t heard that Fox had been alone for four years, it likely would have taken her a while to even guess as much. “You’ve been holding your own, though,” she said.

Fox gave her a grateful look. “I’ve been trying. But it’s hard sometimes.”

“I never said it wasn’t,” Grey replied.

“Right,” Fox sighed. “Thanks.” She stared at her hands, which were wrapped around her coffee mug. “When should I tell everyone?” she asked.

Grey watched her closely, tapping a finger against her lips. “Sooner is best.”

“I don’t want to interrupt the flow of things around here,” Fox said, looking at her.

“So wait until later today, when most of the work is done,” Grey suggested. The Reds and Blues were _always_ free at the end of the day. Kimball was a little harder to get a hold of, but Grey knew that if something sounded important, the General would be there to hear it.

“Okay,” Fox said, looking uneasy. “I’ll...talk with Kimball and see if we can get everyone in one place.”

Grey nodded, then gave Fox a small smile. “Don’t try to sweat this too much. You screwed up, but you’re trying to make it better. And that’s what counts.” When Fox had nothing to say to that, Grey stood, picking up her coffee mug, and turned, looking over her shoulder at her other. “Now, I’m going to try to finish some of these upgrades and see if I can clear up some of this mess. It would be _much_ appreciated if you could help out, and even _more_ so if you would assist me in smooth-talking Matthews into coming in here to let me test some of them out.”

Fox sighed. “That poor kid is going to die young because of you, Grey.”

“Oh, pish-posh!” Grey snorted. “He’ll gain a few more years on the end of his life because of me!” she exclaimed, walking over to one of the counters and setting her mug down next to the materials.

“Better him than me,” Fox retorted, walking over and standing next to her.

Grey gave her a frown, then rubbed her hands together and looked down at the partially-completed upgrade before her. “There will be _none_ of that negativity _here,_ missy! Now pass me that screwdriver. I want to see if I can get this little thing to _work.”_

 

* * *

 

Kimball had followed Grey’s advice and spent much of her time during the past week out of her office. It felt _amazing._ At first she hadn’t been sure that it would be of any help, but as the days went by, she realized that she had _seriously_ needed a break. And now, as she put the lid back on her travel mug and headed back to her office for the first time today, she felt absolutely refreshed.

As she headed through the hallways, she made a point of stopping and taking a quick look at any repairs she encountered along the way to see how progress had come. Things at headquarters were almost back to normal by now, with everyone falling back into their typical daily routines. It was nice, Kimball thought, to see that everyone seemed to be carrying on just fine. It was almost, _almost_ enough for her to let her guard down.

The pirates were still a threat, and while none of the patrols had reported anything, Kimball knew that they would likely run into them again. It was only a matter of time. At least now they didn’t have to worry about their infrastructure collapsing in on them when it finally happened.

She thought about this as she turned the corner and headed towards the elevator at the end of the hallway. The Reds and Blues were still keeping it together, and had been remarkably helpful. And Fox’s time with Locus had certainly paid off. Those things combined were reassurance enough that they’d stand a good enough chance when the pirates returned.

Kimball made a mental note to have a talk with Wash and Carolina at the end of the discussing Fox and Locus’ progress. The two had a full day together at this point, and her men had long since grown accustomed to having Locus around. He had already proven at this point that he was trustworthy enough to be left alone with the others. And he didn’t appear to have any ulterior motives. It was time to discuss the topic fully assimilating him with Fox.

Kimball reached the elevator and pressed the button to go up, then turned when she heard someone call her name.

 _Speak of the devil,_ Kimball thought when she saw Fox jogging towards her down the hallway.

“Oh man, I’m glad I was able to catch you!” Fox exclaimed when she reached her. “There’s something we gotta talk about.”

Kimball glanced at the elevator when the doors opened with a chime, then back to Fox. “Actually, I was just thinking about you,” she said.

The elevator doors slid shut again, and Fox seemed to notice, and asked, “is this a bad time?”

“Hm? No, you’re fine. I was just heading up to my office to read some reports,” Kimball replied.  “It’s nothing that important.” Then she tilted her head at Fox, noticing how the other woman was fidgeting with her hands. “Is something wrong?”

“Oh, uh...no. I was just-- I sorta realized that this might take up more time than you have right now.”

Kimball watched her for a moment, trying to figure out what could possibly be on Fox’s mind that was making her seem so uneasy. Then she sighed and hit the button for the elevator again, causing the doors to slide back open. “Why don’t you come up to my office? We can talk there.”

Fox stole a glance backwards, then nodded and stepped into the elevator after her.

Kimball hit the button for her floor, and watched as the doors slid shut before looking over at Fox. Something was _definitely_ up. Much of Fox’s typical confident demeanor was gone, and she appeared nervous. _If it was something to do with Locus, she would have said something by now,_ Kimball told herself, trying to rationalize the thoughts filling her head.

“So, uh, what were you thinking about earlier?” Fox asked.

“Hm?”

“You mentioned you were thinking about me,” Fox said.

“Ah,” Kimball replied. “I was thinking about how you and I needed to talk about the possibility of assimilating Locus amongst my men.”

Fox looked taken aback by that. “Wow, really? Uh...thank you. I didn’t know you thought I was making that much progress with him.”

“I do,” Kimball assured her. “The reports that you’ve handed me at the end of each week have shown impressive amounts of growth. Just the other day, I Donut told me about a conversation he had with Caboose, and how he said that Locus apparently told him he was sorry about what happened to Epsilon.”

And like that, some of Fox’s confidence had returned. “Well, I’m glad to hear it. I sort of dug into him about his interactions with people a while ago. I’m happy it’s paid off.”

Kimball nodded silently, then said, “of course, all of this will have to be discussed with Agents Washington and Carolina, so we can figure out what sort of boundaries we want to put in place if or when that happens.”

“Gotcha,” Fox replied, then looked over when the elevator doors opened.

Kimball stepped past her, and led her to her office, setting her travel mug on her desk once she got inside. “So what was it that you wanted to talk about?” she asked, looking back at Fox and leaning against her desk.

Fox looked away. “Um...I think this is something that...everyone needs to hear, actually.”

Kimball jerked her head back slightly in surprise. “So it’s important?”

“Very important,” Fox nodded.

Kimball watched her for a moment, noting how she almost looked _guilty_ , and wondered if this had anything to do with the age slip she had made a while ago, and suddenly grew very curious. “Very well, I’ll contact them and get them in here.” And then she turned and sent out a broadcast to the Reds and Blues. Whatever _this_ was, it was going to be interesting.

 

* * *

 

 _Okay, alright. You can do this. This isn’t hard. You’ve done this before. Just run through it, same as you did with Locus,_ Fox told herself, watching as the Reds and Blues filed into Kimball’s office and made themselves comfortable. She looked over as Locus stepped in after Doctor Grey, and met his gaze, earning a small nod of acknowledgement from him. She had left him with Grey to run and find Kimball, and though she knew that he was likely still unhappy with her little reveal, knowing he was here made her feel a little better.

“Thank you all for coming so quickly on such short notice,” Kimball began once everyone had entered. “I’ve asked you all to come because Fox has something important that she’d like to share with all of us.” She turned and looked at Fox. “You have the stage.”

Fox gave her a nod, anxiety forming a tight knot in her chest that it hurt to breathe past. _Deep breath. You can do this._

“So I want to start off by thanking you guys for being really supportive and understanding,” Fox said, forcing an even tone. “I know I’m new to the party, and I don’t really fit in around here, but you guys have been really chill about this whole thing, and it’s honestly made the transition so much easier.” Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Grey nodding her head slightly. It was enough to bring some of her courage back. “I’ve been working to try to help combat Charon alongside you guys, and as time has gone on, I guess you could say that I’ve started feeling a little less threatened.” Fox paused and sucked in a deep breath.  “Despite all of that, I’m sure some of you have had the suspicion that there’s...maybe something I’m not telling you. And you’ve been right.”

“Fox... what’s going on?” Kimball asked, her voice both firm and concerned.

Fox glanced at her. “So…’Fox’ is just a nickname. Obviously. I got it on Nalome. But the name on my U.N.S.C. paperwork is ‘Annita Rosenblum.’” _Okay, here comes the big reveal. Get the fireworks ready, folks._ “But that’s not my real name. It was an alias set up by a friend of mine in the U.N.S.C. so that I could get involved in the war. My real name is Pepper Matsukaze.”

And for a moment there was nothing but silence. Then Grif spoke up, “seriously? That’s it?”

Fox took in a breath, then said, “well...yes and no. I’m the daughter of Hiro Matsukaze, the guy who created the AI that runs the entire U.N.S.C. database, which contains information on every weapon, ship, and vehicle on any of the colony planets, it has access to satellites, and contains files of every living person. Like, _ever._ It’s basically a massive information hub. You wanna know something, it’s in there.”

“So what you’re saying is that you can get any information you want, about _anyone_?” Simmons asked.

“Well, technically--”

“Why wasn’t this brought up sooner?” Kimball’s voice cut through Fox’s words.

Fox blinked, “because if Hargrove knew who I was, and that I was still alive, he wouldn’t have spared any of you trying to get me. I didn’t want to _not_ tell you; I didn’t have a _choice._ He could do awful, awful things with the information on that database.”

“Such as?”

Fox forced herself to stay calm. “Such as figure out who you’re close to, who your family is and where they are, and use them as leverage. And then do the same to pretty much anyone in the U.N.S.C.”

“Which would ultimately result in Hargrove never seeing trial,” Wash said understandingly.

“Exactly,” Fox replied.

“So...are you Pepper, Annita, or Fox?” Donut asked.

“Who cares? As long as she doesn’t call herself a dirty Blue, it’s fine by me!” Sarge replied.

“At least she didn’t stand up and say that she’s one of two assholes who started a civil war,” Grif added, looking almost physically pained from the fact that he had just agreed with Sarge.

“And I didn’t get stabbed again,” Tucker added. “Shit sucked. I had to drink smoothies for _weeks!_ ”

“Okay, but here’s what doesn’t add up; if you knew what Charon could use you for, why did you start working for them in the first place?” Carolina asked.

Fox took a deep breath, got her thoughts in order, and then explained the twelve year program, and how Charon had asked for her to lead a research team that she thought would ultimately help people, and how naive she had been, and how she hadn’t realized Charon’s intentions, and how it had led to her friends being killed. And then she explained how she was set to inherit Emblem, and how she was supposed to be working with Manning, and how if the U.N.S.C. ever found out what she had done, they would cut her off from the system, and she’d never be able to use what she had to help fight Charon. And when she finished, there was a long stretch of silence between her and the others, that made her heart beat a thousand miles a minute, because oh god, she probably looked and sounded like the _biggest_ idiot. And it was all because she didn’t trust the right people.

“You didn’t trust us,” Wash spoke up suddenly, shifting his weight and tilting his head, but appearing unoffended.

Fox looked over at him, biting her lip. “I-- Look. I like you guys. Really, I really, _really_ do.” She looked out at the others. “Like, I can’t put into words how great all of you have been. But...I was scared. I was scared of what would happen. I wish there was more to it than that. I know it’s pathetic. I’m sorry.”

Wash looked down in thought, and Fox could have sworn she saw him nod his head slightly.

“If I may,” Grey called out from the back, “I’d like to remind you that you _did_ just escape from a very hostile situation. One that was caused by trusting someone you thought was on your side, and turned out to be the opposite.” She offered a kind smile. “Nothing about this is pathetic. If anything, it’s understandable.”

Fox stole a look over at Kimball, and noticed that she seemed to be lost in thought. “Thanks,” she said, turning back to Grey. “I just--”

“So how does this database you mentioned come into play?” Kimball interrupted, looking at her.

Fox glanced over at the others, eyes falling on Doc. He noticed her, and gave her a thumbs-up and a crooked smile. She gave him a small nod, then looked back at Kimball. “So...like I mentioned a while ago, when I first got here, that Hargrove is likely to try to get as much support from his friends and business partners as possible in the coming months. And if the U.N.S.C. is going to be doing things by the books-- and let’s be real here, with this whole thing in the public eye like it is, they will be -- then we know that the trial is going to take place on earth at the U.N.S.C. Supreme Headquarters in New York City. Naturally, Hargrove is going to wind up there, which means all his friends will be honing in on the United Republic of North America. Which _means_ that it’ll be a literal cesspool of corrupt capitalist assholes just waiting to be taken care of,” Fox explained. “If _I_ were the chairman of a multi- _billion_ dollar company about to be taken down for basically treason, I would be making deals. Lots of them. Deals that would benefit anyone in the U.N.S.C. looking to fill their pockets and cause them to suddenly ‘forget’ all of the horrible shit Hargrove has done when the verdict is being decided on. And I’m willing to bet that there are more officials who are more interested in cash than justice, _especially_ considering Hargrove’s ties to the U.N.S.C., so this shit has real potential to get ugly.”

“The U.N.S.C. has a _job_ to do. They can’t just look the other way, right?” Donut asked. Beside him, Grey shook her head.

“The U.N.S.C. _abandoned_ us, remember?” Grey reminded.

“They’re also responsible for the failure and ultimate destruction of several colony planets,” Locus spoke up.

“Among other things,” Wash muttered.

“Power breeds corruption,” Fox said, “which is why we can’t trust the U.N.S.C. to have our backs on _any_ of this. If we’re going to get rid of Hargrove, we need to do it ourselves.”

“Which is where that database of yours comes in?” Kimball asked.

“Exactly,” Fox replied. “The problem is that I can’t actually reach it from here. Which means that I can’t use it to find out Hargrove’s connections and convince them not to help him out.”

“Where _is_ the database?” Simmons asked.

“Earth,” Fox replied. “Specifically in the northern part of Boston, Massachusetts.”

“And in order to reach it, you would need to go there, I’m guessing?” Kimball asked, crossing her arms and tilting her head.

“Unfortunately...yes,” Fox replied. And when Kimball leaned back slightly at that, continued, saying, “I know this is a lot to ask of you, especially since I’m new here, and I’ve kinda been lying to everyone about my identity. But because of my ties to Emblem, I have a fairly diplomatic relationship with the U.N.S.C. I also have a number of wealthy connections, who, with a bit of poking and prodding, I could also convince to send supply shipments to you guys from there.”

“And what about Hargrove’s friends? If, hypothetically, you go to Earth, wouldn’t it make sense to deal with them as well?” Wash asked.

“It’s like I said,” Fox began, “if _I_ were the owner of a multi-billion dollar corporation about to get my ass kicked by the justice system, I would start making deals. And so that’s what I would do. Not only that, but I could assemble a team and make physical contact with many of the people Hargrove is going to try to get on his side and...convince them...to play nice on the side of justice. Honestly, that would be your best bet, because if there are people working on the inside to eliminate the threat, the likelihood that Hargrove is going to send the fight to you is much slimmer than it would be.”

Beside her, Kimball drew in a deep breath. “How many of these connections of yours can be contacted from here?”

Fox looked over at her, praying that she was getting the right connotations from the question. That Kimball was actually _considering_ what she had told everyone. “Unfortunately, there are only two who actually know about the whole alias thing. And if we were going to get in touch with them, I’d have to set up that big quantum computer that I brought back.”

“Quantum computer?” Simmons asked. And both he and Doctor Grey perked up.

“Yeah, that’s what was in that big crate that Grif and Caboose pushed into that Condor,” Fox replied.

“That was a _computer!?”_ Grif exclaimed.

“Is she nice?” Caboose asked.

“Considering she’s just a machine, with literally no personality, I’d say yes,” Fox said, nodding at Caboose.

“How long will that take to set up?” Kimball asked. “I want to know who we're dealing with before _any_ of this is taken into consideration.”

“A few days,” Fox replied.

“It'll be less if I helped you,” Grey responded.

“Then that's the first order of business,” Kimball said. “Once that's done, and I've reached out to your contacts then we'll figure out our next step.” She let out a long sigh, looking over at Fox. “This is a lot of information. It's going to take some time to process. But I'm glad that you shared it.”

Under her helmet, Fox forced a smile. “Understood.”

“So for now, I want you working on getting that computer together. Employ the help of whoever you need,” Kimball continued. “The rest of you will continue business as usual. If anything changes, I will let you know. Dismissed.”

Fox watched as the Reds and Blues hesitantly began to file out, murmuring amongst themselves. And when it was just her, Locus, Grey, and Kimball left, she turned to the latter and said, “I'm really sorry about all of this.”

Kimball shook her head. “I'd be a liar if I said I didn't suspect something.”

Fox blinked. “What gave it away?”

“Your age. It didn't match up with what was listed in the information I found on your alias.”

“Oh,” Fox said, suddenly remembering what she had said when calibrating the shield to Locus’ implants. _“Oops.”_

“I asked Grey to keep an eye on you for me,” Kimball admitted.

Out of the corner of her eye, Fox noticed the grin that appeared on Grey's face. “Huh. Funny, since she was the one who convinced me to tell you all this.” She paused. “Well, her and Sunshine over there. I guess you can thank both of them for this.”

Kimball tilted her head slightly. “I see,” she said. She was quiet just long enough for Fox to start feeling nervous before she said, “from now on, I want you to tell me about important things like this. I understand why you kept this quiet, but we...we need to trust each other, understand?”

“I _do_ trust you,” Fox replied. “I wouldn't have said anything otherwise. But yes, I understand.” She was quiet for a moment, then added, “thank you.”

Kimball nodded. “If that's all, I would like you and Grey to get working on that computer.”

“Copy that,” Fox said, then turned and headed for the exit, giving both Grey and Locus a nod before stepping out, glad they would be keeping her company as she moved forward.

 

* * *

 

“So?”

“So.”

“So are we gonna talk about what the fuck just _happened?”_ Simmons asked. After the meeting, everyone had sort of gathered in the motor pool. But no one had said _anything_ about what had just happened in Kimball’s office.

Grif, who had indulged Simmons with a simple, one-word answer, sighed. “Does any of it really matter?”

“Um, _yes?!_ She’s been _lying_ to us this whole _time!_ And Kimball had her paired with _Locus!_ ”

“Aw, relax, Simmons! Just ‘cause the lady didn’t tell us her real name or any of that other stuff, doesn’t mean she’s one of the bad guys!” Sarge replied. “Th’ way I see it, as long as she’s not one of those dirty space pirates, then there’s no problem!”

“Come on, Simmons! It doesn’t matter what she calls herself! Annita Roselbub, Paper Mazel Tov, Miss Fox. As long as she’s still our friend!” Caboose added.

Simmons shook his head, feeling like he was about to explode. But before he had a chance to reply, Wash spoke up.

“Look, we’re all kind of surprised, but I think we should take into account what she’s been through.”

“And what about what _we’ve_ been through?” Tucker asked, sounding irritated.

“I mean…” Donut trailed off when everyone turned to look at him, then sucked in a breath and continued, “so we’ve both been through some bad stuff, right? But we...we at least had _each other._ She had _nobody._ I mean, she was up there all by herself. I just don’t think it’s right to judge, y’know?”

And Simmons was too surprised to get mad, because holy fuck, Donut was taking her side. Then again, his boyfriend literally _worked_ with her, so of _course_ he’d have a different view of the whole thing.

“Donut has...a good point,” Carolina said. “But so do you, Tucker,” she looked over at Tucker, who puffed his chest out a little in confidence. “We’ve _all_ been through a _lot_ recently. And even though the pirates haven’t come back, and things around here are getting back to normal again, tensions are still _very_ high.”

And Simmons knew that, but it didn’t make him feel any better. “Just…” he pressed a hand to the side of his helmet like it would help dull his headache. “What if she’s hiding something else? What if she’s still _working_ for Charon?”

Wash and Carolina exchanged a look. “I...was going to keep an eye on her,” Wash replied. “But I think I’m pretty confident that she’s no longer working for Charon. The AI that we took down on Nalome was priceless. They wouldn’t sacrifice something as valuable as her for something as small as espionage. Not when they could just send more pirates to do whatever damage needs to be done.”

And Simmons just sighed, deciding that it wasn’t worth arguing about anymore. He was tired, he had a headache, and everything Fox had said had only confused him.

“Well, I guess that settles that!” Sarge exclaimed, when no one else had anything to say. “Now, I have a patrol to catch!” He turned and headed for the motor pool exit, barking, “Donut! Let’s hop to it!” as he walked past.

“Yessir!” Donut exclaimed with a snappy salute before hurrying after him.

“Come on, Caboose,” Tucker sighed, “we should check to see how things are going in the armory.”

“Okayyy. Can I say hi to Freckles?” Caboose asked, tailing him with a bounce in his step.

“Sure. Whatever. Just don’t shoot anyone,” Simmons heard Tucker reply as he led Caboose out of view.

“We should get back to our positions too,” Carolina said, looking over at Wash.

“I’ll see you later,” Wash replied with a nod, he started to walk past, but stopped next to Simmons.

Simmons looked over at him, bracing for whatever unsolicited advice he was about to receive.

“It’ll be alright, Captain Simmons,” was all Wash said, before he continued walking and disappeared around the corner.

Simmons watched him go, and when he looked back, it was just him and Grif left in the motor pool. Carolina had pulled one of her disappearing acts. Great. With a long sigh, Simmons walked over and took a seat on one of the large crates next to some shelves and pulled off his helmet, dangling it in one hand, and running the other through his hair. He looked over when Grif sat down next to him and pulled his helmet off too.

“You’re...um…” Grif began, eyes on the floor, looking like he didn’t know how to say what he wanted to. “You had a good point. I guess. It’s...it’s been a lot.”

“You said none of it mattered,” Simmons said bitterly.

“I mean... _yeah?_ I just... _fuck._ I don’t know, Simmons,” Grif sighed. “I don’t fucking know.”

“I thought we were done,” Simmons said, then bit his lip because it felt like there was a knife shoved under his sternum and he was scared that if he said anything else, it would cut something loose, and then everything he’d tied up inside of himself since the fight with the mercenaries would come out. Because the truth was that there was a _lot_ that he was upset about, not just Fox. _It’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back,_ he thought angrily.

He startled when he felt a hand on the back of his neck, and looked over at Grif with surprise. Grif didn’t say anything, but held his gaze. Simmons stared at him for a moment, then asked, “um...what are you doing?”

Grif blinked. “Trying to make you less upset? Is it not working?”

 _Oh_ , Simmons thought. “It’s...fine.”

Grif nodded, and kept his hand in place. He was silent for a moment, then said, “it’s just something I used to do with Kai, after our mother left. It...helped.”

Simmons looked down at the floor, and Grif must have noticed, because he said, “um...I’m not really...amazing at this stuff. But if you wanna talk...y’know, I’ve got nothing to do right now.”

And Simmons couldn’t describe how grateful he was for that. Because truth was, Grif, out of all of his teammates, was the easiest for him to talk to. Sure, Sarge could be empathetic at times, but he was just as likely to tell him to to lighten up. And Donut, despite having the best intentions, didn’t always know what to say. And he could _barely_ understand Lopez.

“I’m not... _actually_ that upset about...what Fox told us,” Simmons confessed. “I’m just tired. And-- and I don’t wanna deal with anything else that might put all of us in danger.”

“Yeah,” Grif sighed, “me too. And I’m not happy about getting dragged into another person’s problems. But I guess...I guess it’s not so bad, since we’re all together.” He frowned. “Most of us, anyways.”

Simmons looked over at him, knowing exactly who he was thinking of. “Are you going to go looking for her when this is all over?”

“That was the plan. If she’s even still alive,” Grif replied.

And Simmons, without thinking, reached over and put his hand on Grif’s knee. “I’m sure she’s okay. She-- she’s tough, right? We’ll find her.”

Grif, whose gaze had been on Simmons’ hand, met his gaze and gave him an odd look. “‘We?’”

Simmons felt his blood rush to his cheeks. “W-well...I--I mean...you’re not...I mean, I--” He sucked in a deep breath. “I want to come with you.”

Grif blinked a few times, and Simmons could have sworn that for a moment, he looked _years_ younger. Then the spell broke, and Grif said, “uh...I guess...sure. That’s...okay.”

Simmons watched him for a moment, wanting to say more, but before he could open his mouth, he heard, _“¿ustedes dos van a hacer algo, o esperan que yo haga todo el trabajo?_ ”

He blinked and looked over, spotting Lopez with a stack of boxes in his arms. Funny. He hadn’t even heard him come in. He glanced over at Grif, then said, “we should probably help him.”

Grif just sighed and removed his hand from the back of Simmons’ neck, picking up his helmet and putting it back on before standing. Simmons did the same.

“Thanks,” Simmons said, once he had his helmet back on, earning him a head tilt from Grif. “For-- for listening. It...helped.”

Grif just shook his head and said, “it’s fine. Let’s just help Lopez with those boxes before he tries to strangle me again.”

Simmons nodded, and the two headed in Lopez’s direction.

 

* * *

 

The rest of the day-- much to Carolina’s gratitude --was uneventful. They were able to locate and patch up a leak that had been caused by some of the explosives the pirates set off. After that, everyone had dispersed.

Carolina looked at the time in the corner of her hud and decided that she might as well get an early start up to Kimball’s office. She had to report what had gotten done today, and check up on Kimball to see how she was doing after the bombshell Fox dropped on everyone. Speaking of Fox, Carolina realized she hadn’t seen the other woman at all after the meeting, and wondered if that was by design, or if she was really that busy. She thought about going down to check on her, but decided that it wasn’t her place, especially considering that Fox didn’t seem particularly fond of her.

Shaking her head to clear her thoughts, she decided she would just head for Kimball’s office instead, and if she ran into Fox later, she’d talk to her then. With a sigh, Carolina double-checked the report on the datapad in her hand, logged it, then tucked it under her arm and headed for Kimball’s office, stopping by her quarters to pick up a few things along the way.

When she got there, the first thing she noticed was that Kimball was completely out of her armor and was dressed down in just her exo-suit with a pale blue hoodie over it. She didn’t look up when Carolina entered, giving her a perfect set-up to simply walk up and set a bottle of whiskey and two solo cups down on her desk.

 _Now_ Kimball looked up, her eyes first falling on Carolina, then darting over to the whiskey. Her face broke into a surprised smile, and with a small laugh, looked back up at Carolina and asked, “what the hell is _that?”_

“A bottle of _White Horse_ whiskey I’ve been holding onto,” Carolina said, setting the datapad down next to the object in mention and taking off her helmet. She shook out her hair, brushing her bangs out of her face. “It was supposed to be for your birthday, but after today, I thought you needed it sooner.”

Kimball laughed at that, picking up the bottle and turning it over in her hands, reading the label. “Isn’t that something,” she said absently. She set it down and looked back at the datapad on her desk. “I checked the logs. I’m glad you guys were able to find that leak. Now we can get our men back on track with training exercises.” She took the top off the bottom and poured both herself and Carolina a drink.

“I doubt the lieutenants will be very happy about that,” Carolina replied, taking her cup from Kimball.

“Or _Grif,_ ” Kimball added with a smile.

Carolina let out a little chuckle at that, and took a sip of her drink.

Kimball did so as well. “Wow,” she said, looking at Carolina. “That’s pretty good. _Where_ did you get this from?”

“Sorry,” Carolina replied, grinning. “That’s top-secret Freelancer information.”

“So if you told me, you’d have to kill me, right?”

“Something like that,” Carolina laughed. She took another sip of her drink and then set her cup down on Kimball’s desk. “So,” she finally said, her smile fading.

Kimball seemed to know what she was thinking, because she set her cup down too and said, “the elephant in the room.”

Carolina just nodded, then asked, “how are you doing? I know...what we talked about…and now this. How are you holding up with all of it?”

Kimball sighed and stared into her drink. “I get it,” she said after a moment of silence. She looked up at Carolina. “I don’t like it, but I get it. I think...I understand why Fox did what she did. I’m not happy about it. But it’s hard for me to be upset about it too.”

“I...had a feeling you would say that,” Carolina replied.

“What about you?” Kimball asked.

Carolina shrugged and looked away, breathing in deeply. “I guess I feel the same way. I know that Wash does too. I know what it’s like to put my faith in the wrong people. Honestly, the fact that she would trust us with this information so soon, after really only having met us, is surprising. But I’m not complaining. At least she told us at all.”

Kimball nodded, and the two sat in silence for a while. Finally, she spoke up again, saying, “I’m thinking that it’ll be easier to keep things the same with her.”

Carolina looked back at her. “So you _are_ keeping her with Locus, then?”

“The two work well together. There’s no denying that,” Kimball replied, taking a sip of her drink. “And it wouldn’t help anyone to pull them apart. What I’m worried about is that if we _do_ send her to Earth, she’ll try to take him with her.”

“We can’t send her down there by herself,” Carolina replied. Though she wasn’t in love with the idea of putting that amount of trust in Locus, she also didn’t like the thought of sending any of the Reds or Blues, or _Wash_ down there with her. Kimball needed them _here._ “I don’t like it, but he might just be the smartest option to send with her. We’ve lost a lot of men in these past few months.”

Kimball didn’t say anything, but looked like she was thinking hard about what Carolina said. “It’s like I told Fox, there are no plans right now. We’ll deal with things as they come.”

Carolina let out a soft sigh. That wasn’t the answer she had hoped for, but she didn’t want to push Kimball either. She was under enough pressure as it was. She looked away for a moment, trying to find a topic to change the subject to, as their current one had gotten stale. After a moment, it came to her, and she looked back at Kimball and asked, “So are you planning on making it a habit to come and join me on patrols?”

Kimball seemed startled by the question. “Well…,” she began setting her cup on her desk, “honestly, that was just me trying to get some time away from this office to de-stress. Grey says that I need to get out more, and as always, she was right. It helped. Why? Am I getting in your way?”

Now it was Carolina’s turn to be startled. “Wh- _no._ I mean-- It’s…” she turned her eyes in the direction of the filing cabinet against the wall to her right. “I don’t _mind_ having you out there.”

“But I _am_ getting in your way,” Kimball said. There was a small smile on her face that suggested she knew what Carolina was _really_ thinking.

But in truth, Carolina _enjoyed_ her company. Of course, putting that into words was harder than putting pants on a centipede for Carolina. “It’s a nice change of pace,” she decided to say. “We don’t have much time during the day to talk unless it’s business of some kind.”

Kimball narrowed her eyes and tilted her head slightly, seeming to think about her response. “No,” she agreed, “we don’t.”

“And if you want to keep coming out there, you don’t need to ask my permission. You _are_ in charge of things around here,” Carolina continued, unable to help but feel like she was just digging herself into a deeper hole.

And like that, Kimball’s smile was back. “I see,” she said, sounding like she was hiding a laugh. “Well, I’ll be sure to keep stopping by, then.”

And Carolina let out an internal sigh of relief. She finished her drink and tossed her cup into the wastebasket next to Kimball’s desk. “How late are you planning on staying in here?” she asked.

“Not much longer. Grey will have my head if I pull another all-nighter,” Kimball replied.

“Or I will,” Carolina teased.

Kimball gave her a surprised look, then chuckled. “I figured as much.” She looked over at her computer screen. “Anyways, I have some work I’d like to get finished before I wrap it up, and we’ve both had a long day.” She looked back at Carolina. “Why don’t you try to get some rest?”

Carolina let out a soft sigh. “I’ll try,” she said, picking up her helmet, aware that her time with Kimball was over. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” Then she turned and headed towards the door, stopping when she heard Kimball speak up.

“It was...nice...talking to you, Carolina.”

Carolina looked back, gave Kimball a small smile and a nod, then continued on her way.

 

* * *

 

The dying light of the sun bathed the Chorusan landscape in a warm glow as it slipped behind the distant mountains. Kimball watched as the shadows around and beneath her grew long and cool, fixing her focus on a flock of alien bird-like creatures soared above the valley below, the smooth skin on their four vibrantly-colored wings shining in the sunset.

Birds were a rare sight these days; birds-- and all other animals for that matter. The civil war, and the battles that had followed after the discovery of Charon’s influence, had driven most of them away. If this was a sign of something, she wasn’t sure what it was.

She had meant to head to her quarters after finishing up her work for the day, but something had driven her away, and instead she found herself back in her armor, standing near the edge of a cliff, watching the sunset. The conversation with Carolina had been...helpful. At the very least, it had improved her mood somewhat. Not to say that what Fox had told them earlier that day had been terribly upsetting, but it _had_ been enough to unbalance her slightly.

Of course, she had never fully trusted Fox. Not completely. Even though she wanted to. Even though she had seemed, and _still_ seemed, genuine. Kimball needed to know more, understand more. Because even though Fox, despite all of her fears, had told them the truth about her identity, she _still_ had a feeling that there was something missing. That there were still leftover empty spaces in the puzzle, and she hadn’t quite found all of the pieces yet.

Kimball wondered what Doyle would have done, had their roles been reversed.

It had been nearly two months since the leader of the Federal Army of Chorus had given his life in Armonia. Kimball found herself thinking back to the fiery, golden ball rising up out of the city against the blue of the sky, and how the smoke from the aftermath had filled the atmosphere for days after. Thinking about the events leading up to that moment made Kimball’s stomach churn, and left a bitter taste in her mouth. It shouldn’t have been him. It shouldn’t have been _any_ of them. And all of it had happened because they had trusted the wrong people. She couldn’t let that happen again. She needed to know that Fox was on their side completely.

Pulling herself back into the world, Kimball closed her eyes and sucked in a deep breath. When she opened her eyes again, the last of the sun’s rays had vanished behind the mountains.

But that wasn’t all that had changed.

The hairs standing up on the back of her neck, Kimball became acutely aware of the feeling that she was being watched. Reaching slowly for the gun on her hip, she took a deep breath, then whirled around, drawing the weapon and aiming it chest-level. And for a split-second, she was still, save for the gradual tightening of her hands around the grip of her pistol. Then the shock wore off; replaced by a bolt of hot tension that shot through her shoulders and spine. “What are _you_ doing here?” she demanded coldly, acid dripping from her words.

She had been expecting a space pirate, or maybe one of the Reds or Blues who hadn’t _quite_ figured out that sneaking up on her wasn’t the best idea, or _Fox._ So when she had turned and found herself pointing a gun at _Locus_ , her body instinctively kicked into fight mode.

He stood some ways away from her, unarmed. Kimball couldn’t read him well, but judging from how he took a small step back when she whirled on him, he hadn’t expected to be confronted. He was silent for a little too long, and Kimball had half a mind to snap at him, but he finally gathered himself and said, “we need to talk.”

Kimball stared at him for a moment, trying to figure out exactly _how_ he knew where to find her, and how he had managed to slip past the others to _get_ to her. The wheels in her mind turning, she slowly lowered her weapon, but didn’t holster it, and kept her finger by the trigger. “About what?” she asked.

He must have noticed, because the next words he said were, “I’m not a threat. I’m unarmed. I have no intention of harming you.”

“Answer my question.”

Locus was quiet for a moment, then said, “it’s about Fox.”

“What about her?”

“She’s different from Felix and I.”

“I would hope so.”

“And regardless of what she said today, that hasn’t changed.”

And Kimball felt a spike of anger at that. “Don’t condescend me,” she growled.

Locus tilted his head slightly, looking taken aback. “That was not my intention.” He paused for a moment, then said, “in the event that Fox is sent to Earth, she will need someone to accompany her. After the meeting, while we were in Doctor Grey’s lab, unboxing the quantum computer, she implied that she would choose me. I thought it best to make you aware of that.”

He fell silent after that, and Kimball waited a moment in case he wanted to say anything else. But when he didn’t, she straightened up out of the wide stance she had taken and holstered her weapon with a sigh. She looked back up and regarded him for a moment, processing what he had said. “Why...are you telling me this?” He could have kept it quiet. He could have put her in a position where she was forced to make a decision last-minute. He could have _used_ this. So why was he throwing away his chances?

Locus fell silent and tilted his head slightly towards the ground, appearing deep in thought. “Because...it’s the right thing to do,” he replied slowly, looking back at her.

Kimball inclined her head slightly, sizing him up, trying to pick him apart, trying to figure out what was going through his head. “You’re right,” she said after a moment. “It is. Thank you for telling me.”

Locus didn’t reply, but looked at her expectantly, like he was waiting for her to say something else.

And Kimball sighed, because the elephant in the room was overwhelming. “You realize you’re not allowed out here without someone accompanying you, right?”

“I’m aware, and I accept whatever consequence comes from this.”

 _“That_ ,” Kimball began, “is something I will have to discuss with Fox.”

“Do you still trust her?”

Kimball blinked, startled. “I--” She looked away, trying to recollect herself. “Do _you?”_ she asked when her composure failed her.

Locus tilted his head to the side slightly. “Her actions and motivations seem genuine enough.”

“Despite the fact that she lied to us?” Kimball asked, more to test the water and figure out exactly how he felt than to push an opinion.

“It’s like I said, General Kimball, she’s different from Felix and I.”

And Kimball leaned back slightly, falling silent for a moment to process all of what he had told her. It was good to know, at the very least, that he still trusted Fox. At least she still had a way of keeping a lead on him. She tilted her head back slightly, turning her eyes up towards the darkening sky. The last of the sun’s orange glow had faded behind the mountains. They needed to head back soon.

She looked back at Locus, who hadn’t moved, and seemed to be watching her closely. “Is that all?” she asked.

Locus quickly looked away, and was silent for a moment before saying, “no. There’s something else. Something I should have told you when we first spoke after the events on Nalome.” And he turned his gaze towards the ground. Kimball couldn’t tell if it was out of insecurity, guilt, or deep thought. At least not until he spoke. “I...owe you an apology,” he said slowly, looking up at her.

And every thought that had been swarming Kimball’s head froze solid. _What?_ Out of all the things she expected him to say to her, an _apology_ wasn’t one of them. After taking a moment to regain her composure and collect her thoughts, she took a deep breath and said, “go on.”

And for a second, she could have sworn that he tensed up. Like he had hoped that she would simply dismiss him instead of taking interest in what he had to say. But then he spoke up, “there is nothing I can do to fix what I’ve done, but…” He trailed off and turned his head away, clearly thinking about what he wanted to say next. His silence lasted for only a moment before he continued; “I made a choice. I was wrong before, I know that now. I need to make things right.” He took a deep breath and tilted his head slightly towards the ground. “I understand you will never trust me,” he said finally, slowly looking over at her. “But know that I am here now because I want to help bring the chairman to justice.”

He fell silent after that, and Kimball found herself staring at him speechlessly. The truth was, she had no idea how to respond. Though his words _sounded_ sincere, she still wasn’t sure if she could trust them. Though she had to admit that what he had said was consistent with his actions so far. Either he was a better liar than she had thought him to be, or there was something else going on far deeper down than she could see into him.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked, forcing her voice to sound strong and even.

And Locus balked at this. And Kimball wondered if he really was thinking hard about what he wanted to say, or if he was just trying to buy himself more time when he tilted his head towards the ground. “I...have to,” he said finally, like he was forcing the words out instead of letting them come naturally.

“Why?”

“Because I need to do better,” he replied, and Kimball was certain she had never heard him speak so quietly before.

Kimball took in a deep breath, crossing her arms and looking him up and down. “Yes,” she said after a long moment, “you do.”

And she watched as he looked up when her when she spoke, and she couldn’t help but revel in how strange it was to see him like this. Before, he had been nothing but a killer in a suit of armor with a devastating goal. It had been so simple to limit him to that. To kill any idea of personality he might have. But now...now he was just human. Now they were equals. And Kimball had never taken into account how hard that realization was going to be.

“Your actions resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent people,” she said, coldness edging into her voice. “It’s going to take more than an apology to prove to me that you’ve changed.”

And Locus heaved out a long sigh. “Then what can I do?” he asked, looking up at her.

And Kimball realized just how _tired_ he looked; the way he held himself, like a puppet dangling from a single, central string. And she swallowed hard, mind turning over and over as she sought after an answer. There were a billion thoughts-- a billion things she could say-- _wanted_ to say, but none of them stuck quite right. None of them filled in the blank the way she wanted them to. He was a murderer, a monster, but he was here to help. Wasn’t he? _Wasn’t_ he? And the words finally found her, almost automatically. And she said, “you can start by helping us take down the chairman.” The words tasted like vinegar, but at least they were out. Kimball watched Locus give her a slow nod.

“I will,” he said.

“Good,” she replied tersely. Then added, “despite the willingness you’ve shown to both comply with...most of the boundaries I have set in place for you, and assimilate with my men, realize that I’m not in a position where I can trust you. Not yet.”

And Locus said, “I understand,” and Kimball knew he did. And she watched as he turned, having finished with their conversation, and started away. But then he stopped, and looked back over his shoulder at her, and said, “thank you...for listening,” before continuing down the path.

Kimball watched him go, words left unsaid burning like acid in the back of her throat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit: Also changed the ages in this chapter bc continuity.
> 
> WELL HELLO THERE MAIN ARC HOW ARE YOU TODAY I’M SWELL THIS CHAPTER WAS LONG AS FUCK AND SUPER SCARY TO WRITE. *SCREAMS*
> 
> Me, stress-eating because writing is hard: did i do the foreshadowing leading up to this moment right did i keep the reactions in character did i make everything add up did i give fox a good reason oh gosh oh gosh oh gosh  
> Roommate: did you seriously just eat an entire JAR of canned corn?
> 
> Big ole’ time skip because literally nothing of interest actually happens between then and now. Like literally. I tried to put stuff in there but it just. Did not. Work. It wound up feeling so forced and didn’t actually move the plot along and kind of existed for the sake of being there, so I scrapped it. This is probably going to be the case for the next few chapters, because things start moving way faster from here and don’t slow down again until the arc that’s been going since chapter one comes to a close. 
> 
> It’s like Naruto Shippuuden, but with less ninjas and (hopefully) better writing
> 
> It’s very interesting to see how Fox and Locus interact when they’re alone together vs. when they’re around other people.  
> Yes Tucker is trans. Listen it makes sense he had a BABY.
> 
> It only gets gayer from here, folks. 
> 
> “Lesbian” is seven letters. Do you know what the number 7 is one line short of? A TRIANGLE! What has three triangles? The TRIFORCE! Do you know what else has three triangles if you connect them all with lines? The letter K! WHAT STARTS WITH THE LETTER K?! KIMBALL.  
> KIMBALL = LESBIAN  
> WAKE UP, AMERICA  
> God they’re both so fucking bad at flirting I want to rip my own face off GET IT TOGETHER GIRLS
> 
> So, recap, Fox is a nickname given to Annita Rosenblum which is an alias given to Pepper Matsukaze so she could help out during the Great War and get hired by Charon because she wanted to help people, so everyone else would think that Pepper Matsukaze is off helping her mentor Howard Manning with biotics and is planning to return to Emblem to become the new CEO, while Annita Rosenblum is helping Charon with biotics and also fucking up a monster AI and helping Chorus while using the nickname Fox because she’s more fond of it than the alias that she paid to have made.  
> Any questions?  
> It’s complicated, I know, but the deeper down the rabbit hole we go, the more you’ll understand why she did all of this crap.  
> I’m going to fight my stupid black and blue trash daughter.
> 
> Fun Fact: Matsukaze means “wind in the pines” and is also the name of a Japanese Noh play. But it’s also a last name.
> 
> Carolina no, Fox likes you, SHE’S JUST REALLY BAD AT MAKING FRIENDS I PROMISE.
> 
> *sheds a tear* my bug son is experiencing character development. I’m so proud.  
> You guys have no idea how long I’ve waited for that confrontation between Kimball and Locus to happen.


	15. Tiger In A Cage

Two months. Tucker stared at the date in the corner of his helmet’s hud absently. It had been two months since the decision to let Fox work with Locus. Somehow it didn’t feel that long, and the realization of how much time had passed left him with a dull feeling of surprise. He had expected all the change they had gone through to affect him more.

Patrol was quiet today; something Kimball’s men had gradually gotten used to after the space pirate attack. They were still a threat, of course, but everyone had sort of accepted by now the fact that they probably wouldn’t be back any time soon.

Tucker looked over lazily as Matthews and Bitters chatted with Andersmith. He remembered that Jensen had been cleared for patrols a few weeks ago, and wondered if he’d see her out and about today. Despite all of his interactions with Grey, he was still surprised at how quickly her skills, combined with modern medical technology, allowed Kimball’s men to get back on their feet in such a short period of time. It was useful, at least.

Tucker looked back over the horizon as a small gust of wind rustled the treetops around him. It was a hot day, and there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky. Which is why he noticed the small speck hovering off in the distance so easily.

“Matthews, Bitters, Smith,” Tucker said, getting the attention of the three lieutenants. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the two turn and look in the direction he was facing.

“That’s not one of ours,” Andersmith said after a moment of observation.

Tucker was about to respond to him when the sound of gunfire and shouting rose out of the jungle below. He and the lieutenants stared in the direction it had come from, then exchanged looks with one another.

“Aw _shit_ ,” Matthews hissed.

“Not _again,_ ” Bitters groaned.

“I’ll contact command,” Andersmith volunteered.

Tucker nodded and looked back at the speck on the horizon that was drawing closer with every second. By now he could pick out the shape of the wings and thrusters. It was the missing Pelican.

The pirates were back after all.

 

 

* * *

 

Two months went by quickly, Kimball realized as she looked over the report Fox had handed to her when she walked into the office. The latter stood across from her before the desk with her arms folded neatly behind her back, awaiting some sort of response.

From what was on the report, things had been going well. Locus was cooperative, and hadn’t shown any signs of resistance. And from what she had observed from simply walking through the halls of their headquarters, her men had almost completely adjusted to having him around.

Kimball finished going over the report, then set the data pad down on her desk and looked back up at Fox. “I’d be a liar if I didn’t say I was impressed,” she admitted.

Fox shrugged. “He’s not as hard of a subject to work with as everyone told me he’d be. And he’s come way farther than I expected in such a short stretch of time,” she said.

“So it seems,” Kimball replied with a nod. “You’ve done well.”

“I try,” Fox shrugged. Then said, “so…” trailing off like she expected Kimball to know what she was thinking.

“So?” Kimball asked, already bracing herself for whatever Fox said next.

“It’s been two weeks since you first brought up the idea of assimilating Locus,” Fox said. “Is that...still a thing? Like, I know we agreed to set back the date after he snuck off to talk to you and broke like, _five_ rules in one go. But it’s been a while, and he’s obviously still doing really well.” She scuffed her heel against the floor, glancing down at it before returning her gaze to Kimball. “I guess I was just thinking that we could spitball some ideas really fast while I’m here.”

Kimball sighed. She couldn’t say she hadn’t seen that coming. “Despite the improvement he’s shown over the past two months, what happened two weeks ago is proof enough that he’s still not ready for that kind of freedom.”

“It’s not like he ran _off_ ,” Fox said, shaking her head slightly. “And from what I heard, the two of you didn’t exactly walk back together. He came back on his own.”

“I’m aware of that,” Kimball said. “But--”

“But you still think he’s going to ditch the second we take the shackles off, don’t you?” Fox interrupted.

Kimball eyed her with annoyance for a moment, then said, “we just need more evidence that he’s not going to try anything if we do.”

Fox sighed and crossed her arms. “I don’t know how to get that to you,” she admitted, looking back at Kimball. “Not unless you give him a chance to prove it himself. You can’t get results without running a test.”

“I know,” Kimball replied, frustrated that they had hit a wall in their discussion. She looked away. “I need some time to think of a way for him to prove that he’s ready that is safe for everyone else involved.”

“What about a solo mission?”

Kimball looked back at Fox. “Too risky.”

“We could have someone tail him.”

Thankfully, any decision Fox had expected Kimball to make was interrupted when she suddenly received a transmission from the command center.

“General Kimball, we have reports of pirates attacking our eastern patrol, and a visual of the Pelican that disappeared,” said a voice over comms.

Kimball processed this for a moment, then looked up at Fox, who seemed to realize that something was wrong. “Space pirates,” she explained quickly, then to the voice over comms, said, “send support to the eastern patrol, and get a team with a sniper on that Pelican. I’ll be down to assist in five.” She then looked back at Fox, and said, “we’ll continue this conversation later. Right now I want you and Locus to assist with backing the eastern patrol.”

“Copy that,” Fox replied.

Kimball watched her go, trying to shake the request out of her thoughts. There were more important things to worry about right now.

 

* * *

 

It had been easy to get used to the idea that the pirates were gone for good. So when a grenade hurtled through the trees and took the arm off of a nearby soldier, Donut was more than a little caught off guard. The blast threw him to the ground, and he felt the prickle of shrapnel against his skin where it had pierced through the kevlar in his suit. Then the shouting and shooting started.

He quickly dragged himself to his feet and darted for cover behind a fallen tree. To his left, a soldier sporting New Republic armor leaned out from his cover of a cluster of boulders to fire a few rounds off into the underbrush. Donut remembered his name was Rory.

 _“_ _¡_ _Hijo de puta!”_ Donut looked over when Lopez slid into cover beside him. There was a scratch mark across his chest plate that suggested he’d been nicked.

“How many are there?!” came the shout from Jensen, who had taken cover beside Rory. Donut couldn’t help but feel a little bad for her. She had just gotten back on her feet.

“I don’t know!” Donut yelled back.

 _“Estamos jodidamente ciegos,”_ Lopez said flatly. _“Se esconden en los arbustos.”_

“You’re right, Lopez! We _should_ try to get them out in the open!” Donut replied.

 _“Mierda,”_ Lopez sighed.

“If we move farther back, we should be able to make them follow us!” Donut reasoned. The forest was dense, and if they were being fired on now, it was because the pirates had a clear shot at them from wherever they were. The more terrain they could put between them, the better their chances were.

“Copy!” Came the simultaneous reply from Jensen and Rory.

Slowly, the four of them began picking their way backwards through the underbrush, weaving behind trees and rocks to cut off their attackers from them. It wasn’t long before the shooting stopped, and Donut pricked his ears and listened. There was the sound of distant shouting that carried up the slope they were situated on.

 _“Creo que trabajaron,”_ Lopez said quietly.

But before Donut could reply, the sound of cracking branches and scuffing sounded ahead. The four of them listened intently as the noise drew closer and closer.

“Those are footsteps,” Jensen whispered. “They’re too big to be a human, though. Do you think-?”

“Hargrove’s men got their hands on a few Mantises, didn’t they?” Rory asked.

And Donut felt his heart sink. It was one thing to have to witness someone getting their arm blown off, and another to fight a giant death machine. And today was going so _well._

The sound of a distant explosion brought Donut back to his senses, and he glanced around at his three companions. “We should keep moving,” he suggested, his nerves creeping into his voice. And for once, just _once_ , he wished he could pull his heart off his sleeve, because these people were relying on him to get them through the day.

Swallowing hard, Donut clambered out from behind cover, eyes locked on where the sound of heavy footsteps was coming from, and stood. His stomach tied in a knot when he heard the sound of a gun click behind him.

“Wait, holy fuck, you’re a _dude,”_ came a snigger from whoever had a gun pressed against the back of his neck.

“Well yeah, what did you think I was?” Donut asked in spite of himself.

“A _chick?_ You’re wearing _pink._ ”

Donut sucked in a breath. “It’s _lightish-red_ ,” he corrected, yanking his pistol out of its holster and whirling around to face his attacker, somehow managing to knock the shotgun in his hands upwards. He yelped when the weapon went off, firing buckshot into the sky, and batted the gun to the ground.

The pirate stared at the weapon that was now out of his reach, then looked over at Donut, seeming confused. “Well?” he asked when Donut did nothing. “Aren’t you going to shoot me?”

“Honestly, I wasn’t expecting to get this far,” Donut admitted with a feathery laugh.

The joke was short-lived, however, as a bullet suddenly punched through Donut’s shoulder, and he fell over backwards. The pirate lunged for his gun, and Donut watched as he rose up on one knee and took aim.

He never had the chance to fire.

There was a sound like a screaming gale, and the pirate’s head was rolling across the jungle ground. There was more shouting, and Donut flung himself back into cover next to Lopez, who was cursing in Spanish.

“ _Esa fue la más estúpida de lo que he visto,”_ he growled, then jerked his chin up when more pirates emerged from the undergrowth and started firing.

But Donut’s attention was focused on a familiar shape, as it arced through the trees away from them. “Hey,” he said, tapping Lopez’s shoulder to get his attention, “isn’t that-”

He never got to finish his sentence as the disc slashed through a tree beside them, toppling it and cutting them off from the pirates. Donut turned away as it fell and covered his head with his arms, uncurling and looking back at it once it settled. He flinched when the sound of shooting erupted from where the disc had come from, and listened to the screams of the pirates as they were caught off guard by what he hoped was their backup.

 

  


He holstered his pistol and pulled his submachine gun off his back, supporting it on the top of the fallen tree and firing in the direction of the space pirates. Beside him, Lopez, Jensen, and the Rory did the same.

“Hey Donut, are you still alive down there?” came a familiar voice over comms.

“Tucker?!” Donut exclaimed, ducking back behind cover.

“Oh, good, you are. Listen, we’re here to back you up! Just hang in there until we can reach you!”

“Suuuure thing, pal!” Donut replied, feeling almost relieved. Almost.

Until he heard the sound of a massive footstep slamming into the ground beside them, and remembered the Mantis.

 _“Ay, mierda,”_ Lopez droned, looking to his right.

Donut followed his gaze, and froze, staring up at the towering form of the giant robot.

“Scatter!” Rory shouted, and they did. Donut dove to the left, scrambling for cover as he heard the Mantis drone **_“target acquired.”_ ** There was a scream, and he watched as Rory was flung backwards in a spray of red as the Mantis’ fire hit him.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Lopez engaging the pirates. Donut turned to try to help, but whirled, hackles raised, when he heard the sound of someone charging towards him. He turned just in time to see Fox lunge, spring off the fallen tree, and launch her disk towards the pirates. Two of them went down like bowling pins, and those around them redirected their fire towards her.

The concussive sound of a sniper rifle tore through the trees, and Donut watched as another pirate fell. He heard a yell that sounded an awful lot like Tucker, and startled when Lopez leapt over the fallen tree, launching himself out of cover. He didn’t see the pirate with the grenade launcher aiming at him.

“Lopez! No, _wait!-”_

The explosion cut Donut off, and he was forced back behind cover. He didn’t have time to clear his head before a massive, metal foot slammed into the ground right in front of him, and a voice, in a gravelly, metallic drone, said, **_“Target locked.”_ **

 

* * *

 

**Earlier:**

 

Tucker had come to the decision that Kimball was trying to kill him. He had come to this conclusion when Fox and Locus showed up with news that they were assigned to assist the eastern patrol alongside them. It had certainly thrown him through a loop, what with the fact that they were just _letting_ Locus outside again, but he’d made the executive decision to simply suck it up. After all, Donut and Lopez had been assigned to that patrol. Their safety was far more important than any grievances he had with Locus.

At least he was quiet.

As they crept through the undergrowth, Tucker listened intently. The sound of gunfire had ceased shortly after they had begun tracking the footsteps of the patrol. It was worrying.

Beside him, Caboose quietly hummed what might have been a very off-key version of the _Mission Impossible_ theme, Andersmith and Matthews moved quietly, and Bitters muttered complaints to himself. To his left, Fox scanned the jungle, her head jerking in the direction of every sound and movement. Behind her, Locus walked in silence, and Tucker couldn’t tell what he was contributing, if anything.

“It’s been too quiet for too long,” Fox hissed over comms.

“Do you think they’re okay?” Caboose asked.

“I don’t know, Caboose,” Tucker admitted, worry creeping up his throat.

They crested the hill they had been climbing, and wound up almost immediately throwing themselves in the direction they had come from when the sound of gunfire suddenly ripped through the trees. All seven of them dropped onto their stomachs, and Tucker army-crawled up to the crest of the hill again, hackles raised.

“Hey Donut, you still alive down there?” he asked over comms.

“Tucker?!” came the startled reply. Tucker couldn’t help but let out a sigh of relief.

“Oh, good, you are. Listen, we’re here to back you up! Just hang in there until we can reach you!” he replied, then started scanning the trees. If they were going to help, they needed to know where everyone was. “I can’t see anything,” he hissed after a moment. The jungle was simply too dense.

“Let me try.” Tucker looked over as Fox crawled up to join him, and watched with curious fascination as a light on the side of her helmet flared red with a _ding_ and a purr _._ She was quiet for a moment as she gazed ahead, and Tucker noted how she appeared to wind up like a spring. “I’ve got ten hostiles to the northeast, and a Mantis making its way up the hill.”

“What about Donut and Lopez?”

“Them and two others are pinned behind cover, it looks like. It’s hard to tell, but they’re definitely all alive-- Oh for fuck’s sake.” Fox leapt to her feet suddenly, grabbed the shield base off of her hip, spun, and hurled it ahead. Tucker watched as the blade extruded from around the base mid-air, and the shield hurtled off through the trees.

“They’re going to get themselves killed,” Fox hissed. She turned and looked back at Locus, and said, “try to get a vantage point and see if you can take a few of them out. You’ve got support this round.” Then she dropped and slid down the steep hill in the direction of the fight.

Tucker exchanged a look with Caboose, then muttered out a frustrated, “goddamnit,” and followed her.

When the sound of gunfire drew too close, he backpedalled with his hands to stop himself, rising up onto his feet and ducking behind the thick trunk of a tree. Caboose slid a little farther, but wound up doing the same.  

When Tucker looked ahead, he realized he could make the fight out through the trees, and he felt his heart sink when he noticed the bloodied body of a soldier wearing New Republic armor. Rory. They should have moved faster. “Matthews, Smith, Bitters, you three circle around and try to cut them off,” Tucker ordered over comms.

“Copy,” came the reply from Andersmith.

A movement to Tucker’s left caught his attention, and he watched as Fox darted through the trees and launched herself off of a fallen tree that Lopez and Donut had taken cover behind.

The sound of a sniper round tearing through the trees halted them before either could make a move to help, and Tucker felt his breath escape between his teeth. It looked like Locus had found a good spot to do some damage.

He was yanked out of his thoughts when he heard an all-too-familiar yell. He ducked away as an explosion ripped through the jungle, then turned back in the direction the cry had come from. Through the trees, he made out the form of Donut, who was scrambling for cover. Right in front of him, weapons armed, was a Mantis.

 _“Shit!”_ Tucker hissed. Holstering his gun, he jumped out from cover and bolted for the Mantis, letting the slope of the hill heighten his speed. Letting out a savage yell, he pulled out his sword, activated it, and launched himself onto the machine.

 **_“Your interference is not appreciated,”_ ** the Mantis droned, and shook itself, forcing Tucker to hold on for dear life.

“Tucker!” Caboose shouted.

“I’m a little _busy_ right now!” Tucker snapped back, too busy holding on to look in his teammate’s direction.

“Freckles says to go for his eyes!”

“It doesn’t even _have_ eyes!” Tucker screeched. He reached up with a hand to try to get a better grip, but wound up slipping, having the hand he was still holding on with get jammed in a joint, and being flung off.

He hit the ground hard, and scrambled to his feet, tucking his injured hand under his opposite arm. He darted behind cover as the Mantis realized it had thrown him, and turned in his direction to attack. Under his helmet, Tucker grit his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut as the Mantis’ bullets ripped into the tree he was ducking behind.

A shuffling sound to his right caused him to look over, and he noticed Donut hurrying into cover. Once he’d settled, he looked over and caught Tucker’s gaze.

“Oh man, I thought I was a goner, there!” he breathed.

“You’re not the only one,” Tucker replied, sucking in a breath when he heard the Mantis start towards them. “Where the fuck is Lopez when you need him?”

There was a humming shriek as Fox’s shield zipped overhead, cutting through branches as it moved, and arced in the direction of a pirate who had a grenade launcher in his hands.

“I think he blew up!” Donut cried.

“Huh?!”

“Lopez! There was a guy with a grenade launcher! I tried to warn him!”

Tucker looked back just in time to see the shield cut through the pirate, the launcher in his hands bursting apart in an explosion of oranges and reds. “Shit.”

“We have to do something about that Mantis!” came a cry from Jensen over comms.

“No shit!” was the reply from Bitters.

“Captain Tucker, we have visual on the Mantis. Should we engage?” Andersmith asked.

Tucker peered out from behind what was left of the tree he was using for cover. Immediately, the Mantis open fired on him, forcing him back. “Put this fucker down!” he yelled, right as the tree gave out, and with a sickening cracking sound, began to topple over.

 

* * *

 

“I could be on the beach. I could be on the beach, sipping a _fucking_ piña colada, with my feet in the water and a cooler full of ice cream next to me. But _no._ No, _I_ had to wake up this morning and fight a bunch of shit-eating cockbites _instead_ . _Fuck_ my life.”

“Are you done?”

“I’m getting shot at by a giant death robot. _What do you think?!_ ” Grif near-shrieked at Simmons, who was crouching behind cover beside him.

“Will you two quit yer yappin’? I’m tryin’ to _focus!_ ” came the irritated bark from Sarge over comms.

Grif let out a frustrated sigh and leaned out from cover when the gunfire stopped. The Mantis was still there. The thing had come out of nowhere. One minute they had been trying to shoot down a Pelican, the next, a massive death-bot was being dropped right in front of them. Today couldn’t get any worse.

“The Pelican’s gone,” came the update from Palomo, who was crouched behind the Warthog they had driven up to the vantage point.

“Which leaves us with one less thing to worry about!” Sarge exclaimed. Then, “git’cher head down, son. I need to borrow this for a minute.”

“What the fuck is he up to?” Grif muttered more to himself than to Simmons. He tried to find Sarge, but couldn’t see much where he was currently situated. And moving wasn’t an option with a Mantis breathing down his neck.

 **_“Acquiring new target,”_ ** the Mantis droned suddenly.

Grif felt his stomach knot up. It only got worse when he heard the sound of an engine revving and all too familiar music start playing. Leaning out a little bit, he caught sight of Sarge in the Warthog charging towards the Mantis. The vehicle’s engine roared as Sarge put the pedal to the metal and steered it into a jump off of a rocky ledge.

And Grif watched with a mixture of horror and amazement as it flew over them in slow-motion.

“Holy _shit!_ ” Simmons screeched as the Warthog slammed into the Mantis.

The Mantis’ legs gave out under the force of the blow and toppled backwards, and the Warthog flipped nose over tail onto its back and skidded a few feet away before coming to a stop.

 _“Sarge!”_ Grif heard himself yell. And as the Mantis struggled to stand, he charged out from behind cover towards the wreckage of the Warthog. He skidded to a halt beside it, and dropped to the ground, peering under it, eyes locking on Sarge’s form. He looked unconscious.

“Can we move it?” Grif looked over when Simmons spoke right next to him, and realized he had been followed.

“No-- I don’t know! It’s too heavy!”

“Shit, _shit!_ ” Simmons swore, looking over as the Mantis managed to successfully get itself onto its belly.

“Sarge?!” Grif shouted back under the Warthog. “Come on you old bastard, you can’t die yet!”

“Grif, ya damn low-life,” Sarge groaned, coming to. “What happened?”

“You drove a Warthog into a Mantis, dumbass!”

“Did I kill it?”

“Nope,” came the worried reply from Simmons. Grif looked over in his direction and froze, watching as the Mantis got its feet back under it and rose.

“Well, shit,” Simmons said.

 _“Move!”_ Grif roared, and dove behind the raised tail of the Warthog. Simmons did the same, packing in beside him as bullets ricocheted off the belly of the vehicle.

“We have to get him out of there!” Simmons exclaimed.

 _“How?!_ ”

“I don’t _know!_ Just _think!_ ”

“I--” Grif cut off as the sound of a sniper shot echoed through the jungle and the Mantis stopped firing abruptly. He and Simmons peered out from behind the Warthog, spotting Palomo crouching behind the rock formation Sarge had leapt off of, rifle steadied against the stone.

“Hey asshole! Why don’t you pick on--” Palomo cut off as the Mantis turned its torso in a one-eighty towards him, its legs following suit shortly after. “--Oh. Okay. That worked way too well,” Palomo gulped. “That worked _way too well!_ Oh _fuck!_ ” he cried as the Mantis open fired.

This was bad.

 

* * *

 

Sarge was no stranger to pain; shooting into hell feet-first in a drop pod at a thousand fuck-off degrees through atmospheric entry. So when the Warthog flipped and knocked his lights out, and he woke up with his arm caught under a mess of machinery, he took a deep breath and tried to find out more information.

Of course Grif was damn useless. As usual.

And then the Mantis was back on its feet, shooting through the bottom of the Warthog like a hole-puncher through a stack of paper.

With a groan, Sarge put a hand against what used to be the dashboard and yanked as hard as he could. Pain ripped up his arm, and he spat out a string of angry curses that died down to a few angry mutterings forced out between his gritted teeth. Sucking in a breath, he tried again, this time managing to dislodge it with enough force to smack the back of his helmet against the headrest of his seat. He lay there stunned for a moment, then shook his head and set his jaw, grabbed his pistol off his hip, and rolled out from underneath the Warthog--

\--Right as the Mantis went for Palomo.

“This was the worst idea! Ever! Of all time!” Palomo screeched from behind cover over the roar of the Mantis’ guns.

“Sarge! You’re okay!”

Sarge looked over when he heard Simmons’ voice, and spotted him and Grif looking out from behind the Warthog. “You can save the butterfly kisses and baby showers for later, we’ve got a Mantis to kill!” he barked.

“What’s the plan?!” Simmons exclaimed, him and Grif making their way to his side.

“Th’ plan is, you two are gonna draw the Mantis back towards the ‘hog, and me ‘n Palomo are gonna work on takin’ out it’s legs!” Sarge replied.

“That’s stupid!” Grif hissed, right as Simmons whined, “why do _I_ have to be bait?”

“Both of you lowlifes quit yer squabblin’ and do what yer told!” Sarge snapped. “Now I’m gonna head on over to Palomo. When I get into position, you two are gonna draw it’s attention.”

“And how is what you and Palomo plan on doing going to help?” Grif asked.

“Easy! We’re gonna make the Mantis face-plant onto the ‘hog and blow itself up!” Sarge replied.

Simmons and Grif stared at him for a moment, obviously impressed by the incredible plan he had conceived.

“That’s...actually a really good plan, Sarge!” Simmons exclaimed.

“No it’s _not!”_ Grif snapped.

“If you guys are going to _help,_ it would be great if you could do it sometime _today_ please!” Palomo yelled from behind cover.

Sarge looked back at where Palomo was hiding from the Mantis, and realized with dismay that the rock formation was nearly chipped apart from the bullets. “Now you two get in position,” he said, glancing back at Grif and Simmons, then dropped into a crouch and began creeping around the Mantis, a savage grin forming under his helmet.

The Mantis would never know what hit it.

 

* * *

 

Tucker had no choice but to throw himself out of the way when the tree came down towards him. Unfortunately, the act of preventing himself from being crushed put him directly in the Mantis’ line of fire. Unfortunately for the Mantis, it was right then that Donut pulled the pin on a grenade and threw it at it. Unfortunately for Donut, the Mantis detected the grenade and used one of its arms to bat it back towards him.

Donut scrambled out of the way with a shriek, and barely avoided the blast from the grenade, hissing in pain from the fragmentation he took to his back. He turned, heart in his throat when he heard Tucker shout a challenge to the Mantis, and watched him leading it away from him.

A hand on Donut’s shoulder pulled him back into the world, and he jumped with a yelp and looked behind him and froze with shock when his eyes met with a familiar brown helmet. “Lopez! I thought you were dead!”

 _“Robots no pueden morir, idiota,”_ Lopez replied.

“Yeah, I _did_ almost die! It’s a good thing Tucker jumped in when he did,” Donut said, clambering to his feet and looking back in the direction Tucker had headed. By now, most of the fight had moved west, towards the cliff--

“Oh jeeze!” Donut exclaimed, and started in the direction of fight. “Come on, Lopez!”

 _“Nunca voy a tomar un descanso,”_ Lopez muttered, and followed him.

 

* * *

 

Drawing the Mantis away from Donut had seemed like a good idea at the time. It wasn’t until Tucker found himself with his back to a sheer drop into the canopy below and a Mantis bearing down on him at the front that he realized just how badly he’d fucked up. To his left, Jensen, Matthews, Bitters, and Andersmith were engaged with a group of pirates behind cover with neither group making any headway. And Fox was up the hill, picking off any stragglers. Lopez and Donut were nowhere to be found, and Caboose was in the middle of trying to sneak up on two pirates who had situated themselves behind some rocks. Which meant that there was no one to help him.

Perfect.

Tucker stole a glance back into the trees, making out the form of the Mantis as it crashed through the brush. Drawing it over the edge of the cliff was the obvious choice here, but with no one else to help him, he didn’t stand a chance.

Cursing under his breath, he dove into cover as the Mantis broke through the trees. However, much to his horror, it turned and open fired on the lieutenants, forcing them farther back behind cover, and revealing Caboose as he scrambled out of the way with a yell.

“Is someone going to-- _ow_ \-- _do_ something about that?!” Fox roared over comms.

“Can’t you help?!” Tucker shot back.

“I’m a little-- oh for fuck’s sake -- _busy_ at the mome-- _don’t you point that at me, asshole!”_

Tucker cringed when a shriek followed by the sound of an explosion burst through the trees.

“Tuckeeeeer! I’m comiiiiiiing!” came Donut’s voice.

But Tucker was less focused on what was being yelled at him over comms, and more on what he was seeing in front of him as he leaned out from cover. The Mantis took a step towards where Caboose had retreated to, locked its guns, and let out a sound like a car refusing to start. And Tucker watched as one of its arms crashed to the ground in slow motion, the cables at the end of it glowing orange and hot. And, sliding to a halt behind it, sword in hand, camo rippling as it was deactivated, Locus appeared.

The lieutenants raised their heads, and he turned to them and snapped, “move, _now!”_ then skirted around the Mantis as it turned towards him.

Without thinking, Tucker stepped out from behind cover and open fired on the pirates the lieutenants had previously been engaged with before they could take advantage of the situation. The pirates scrambled and darted into the underbrush, and Caboose leaned out from behind a tree and picked two of them off with Freckles’ help.

Out of the corner of his eye, Tucker watched as Locus went for the Mantis again, throwing himself forward _under_ its fire and going for one of its legs.

 **_“This is highly problematic,”_ ** the Mantis said as Locus’ sword cut into its knee, weakening the leg, but not entirely severing it. The Mantis stumbled, beginning to keel backwards as it lost control of its movements, staggering towards where Tucker was standing.

Tucker threw himself out of the way, coming up into a crouch and turning towards the Mantis where it was trying to balance itself near the edge of the rocky cliff. A sudden yell from up the hill drew his attention, and he turned and saw a Marine in familiar pink armor charging towards the Mantis, with Lopez in tow.

“Get some, you oversized washing machine!” Donut screeched, and Tucker noticed the grenade in his hand too late. Donut hurled it at the Mantis as it turned towards him, and the blast slammed the robot to the ground.

The Mantis let out a mechanical sputter, and grated out, **_“primary systems shutting down…”_** before sparking and seizing up, then lying still.

Tucker stared at it for a moment, then turned to Donut, who had skidded to a halt a few yards away. He took in a breath, about to offer something along the lines of a ‘thank you’, when the ground beneath his feet buckled suddenly, and the side of the cliff gave away.

 

* * *

 

“This is the _shittiest_ plan!” Palomo listened to Grif scream over comms as the Mantis directed its fire at him and Simmons.

“Will you just shut yer trap and focus!?” Sarge roared back.

Palomo, just shook his head, took a deep breath, and lined up his rifle. _Don’t fuck this up,_ he thought, taking a deep breath and getting ready to fire when the Mantis reached the Warthog. He exhaled as it lifted its leg up, and pulled the trigger.

The Mantis jerked forward, and instead of face planting into the Warthog like it was supposed to, it _stepped down_ on it instead. The vehicle ruptured in a burst of reds and oranges, and when the smoke cleared the Mantis was still standing.

“It didn’t work! Did I not say this wasn’t going to fucking work?!” Grif screeched into the communication channel. Palomo pulled away from his rifle’s scope and realized that him and Simmons must have dove for cover.

“That’s ‘cause _you_ messed it up!” Sarge barked back, very much _not_ over comms.

Palomo felt his heart sink as the Mantis turned back towards them. He ducked down behind cover as it fired on them, looking over at Sarge and asking, “you’ve got another plan, right?”

“I’m workin’ on it!” Sarge growled back. He raised his gun, turned to aim, and froze, muttering a startled “what in Sam hill?”

And Palomo noticed it too; the Mantis’ fire had been drawn away from them, only to stop abruptly “Oh thank god! Backup!” he cried as he caught sight of Carolina and Wash.

Carolina had her pistols raised, and judging by how the Mantis was smoking, had hit home with them. And as the Mantis staggered backwards, fuming from one of its vents, Wash charged and launched a grenade at it. It bounced off, and Palomo heard Wash screech “oh _come on!_ ” right before the grenade detonated at the Mantis’ feet.

 **_“Ouch,”_ ** the Mantis said, and toppled over backwards.

Palomo stared at the Mantis in amazement, then looked back at Wash and Carolina. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Simmons and Grif creep out from cover and draw closer.

“Is anyone hurt?” Carolina asked over comms.

“Nope!” Sarge replied, as Simmons said “I think Sarge’s shoulder was bleeding?”

“Simmons, you ought to get yer eyes checked! The only red on me is my armor!” Sarge barked off comms, standing up and facing Simmons.

“But you _are_ bleeding,” Palomo replied, standing as well.

“ _Hmph_. Blind lot of good fer nothin’s,” Sarge grumbled, then turned to Wash and shouted “we appreciate the gesture, Blue, but we had this whole situation under control!”

“No we didn’t!” Grif yelled, having reached Wash and Carolina and therefore being close enough _to_ yell.

“Grif, shut yer yap! Everything was going according to plan until you lot showed up!” Sarge exclaimed, starting towards Wash and Carolina.

“I could tell,” Wash replied flatly.

Palomo followed Sarge, listening as he continued to squabble with everyone else, eyes on the ground. Sarge’s plan would have worked if he was just a better shot. This was his fault. He looked up when they finally reached the others, and listened as Wash explained that he and Carolina were just passing through and were on their way to help with the eastern patrol.

“Sarge, I want you to head back and get that arm looked at. Palomo, you go with him,” Carolina ordered.

“Uh...right,” Palomo replied.

“Quit yer fussin’, I’m fine!” Sarge huffed.

“Will you just go!?” Grif snapped.

Sarge sucked in a breath like he was going to reply, but Wash beat him to it and said, “Sarge, just go.”

Sarge fixed him in a look for a moment, and Palomo was sure he was going to argue, but then the older Marine just sighed and said, “alright, fine,” and brushed past Wash and Carolina.

Palomo glanced over at Wash and Carolina, then at Grif and Simmons, then with a cry of “hey, wait up!” he ran to catch up to Sarge.

 

* * *

 

Tucker scrambled for purchase, dismay filling him as the ground he was on lurched backwards. He lunged, hands reaching for the edge of the cliff, and for a moment his fingers sunk into dirt. But then his hold gave away, and he felt himself begin to fall and let out a yell, squeezing his eyes shut. And then something grabbed his wrist and yanked hard, nearly popping his shoulder out of his socket And with a gasp, Tucker opened his eyes and scrabbled blindly with his free hand for something to hold onto, reaching up for whatever had him. It wasn’t until he grasped whatever was latched onto his wrist that he was finally able to focus on what had him.

More specifically, _who._

“Locus?!”

Locus was down on one knee, both hands clamped tightly around Tucker’s wrist. “Stop squirming,” he growled, obvious strain in his voice.

 

 

Tucker blinked, realizing that he was, in fact, kicking his legs, and did his best to stop moving. “Uh…are you gonna pull me up or--”

He didn’t have time to finish as Locus suddenly rose to both feet and stepped back, giving him a hard tug as he did so. Tucker let out a yelp and scrambled for a foothold, managing to find one right as Locus let go of him. His chest hit solid ground, and he grabbed at it with both hands, panicking for a moment until he realized that he wasn’t sliding backwards. He blinked, looking around, noting how his legs were only dangling over the edge from the knees down. “Holy shit,” he breathed, then turned his head forward and army crawled until he was completely on solid ground. Slowly, he raised himself onto shaking legs and peered over the edge of the cliff. When he saw how far he would have fallen, he let out a nervous laugh and stumbled back. “Man, that would have _sucked!_ ”

“You’re welcome.”

Tucker jumped at the sound of Locus’ voice behind him, and turned to face the other Marine, tension shooting into his shoulders. But Locus simply stood there, seeming to size him up for a moment before turning and walking away.

“Uh...where are you going?” Tucker asked, glancing around quickly and noting that the fighting had ceased before looking back at him.

“To finish this,” Locus replied without looking back, then activated his camo and vanished into the trees.

Tucker stared after him, seeing Donut doing the same out of the corner of his eye. The two noticed each other at the same time, and Donut exclaimed, “oh man, I thought you were a goner!”

“You almost got me killed, asshole!” Tucker exclaimed.

“I didn’t mean to! I didn’t know that the ground was going to give out!” Donut protested, putting his hands up defensively.

 _“¿Qué esperabas que hiciera la granada?”_ Lopez asked from behind Donut.

Tucker opened his mouth to say something, but wound up just sighing. “Just...I’m glad you guys are okay,” he huffed.

“Oh, yeah, thanks,” Donut replied, sounding confused at the sudden change of subject. “We totally would have been toast if you guys hadn’t shown up!”

“Tucker! All the pirates are gone!” Caboose shouted, waving down at him and Donut from the top of the hill to his left. Andersmith, Jensen, and Matthews were with him. Tucker watched as the four made their way down to where he, Donut, and Lopez were standing.

“Where did Locus go? I swear I just saw him,” Jensen asked.

“He said something about finishing...something,” Tucker replied. “He was headed wherever those pirates that retreated went, I think.”

“Do Kimball and Fox know this?” Andersmith asked, right as Bitters growled, “oh fucking _great_.”

“Well that was messy.” Tucker turned when he heard Fox’s voice and watched as she emerged from the undergrowth, her black and blue armor splattered with blood and her shield hovering at her wrist.

“Uh….are you...hurt?” Tucker heard Andersmith ask slowly.

“Hm? Oh, uh…” Fox looked down at herself, seeming to suddenly become aware of the mess she had made. “I um...might have made an unlucky pirate’s gun explode by mistake. Which also made _him_ explode. Oops.”

“ _Sick,_ ” Matthews said.

“That is. So gross,” Bitter agreed.

Tucker watched as Fox looked around, seeming to realize who the missing member of their party was. “Where’s Locus?” she asked.

“Uh...we don’t know,” Donut replied nervously.

“Oh,” Fox replied, sounding more surprised than upset. “Well, that’s not...great.”

“I’ll call this one in,” Andersmith volunteered.

“No, no, let me,” Fox sighed. “You’ll just get yelled at.” She looked over at Tucker, “we should probably head back,” she said.

Tucker nodded, perking up as the sound of distant thunder rumbled in the distance. Stealing one glance back towards the cliff, he turned and started back up the hill, saying “let’s go,” and listening as Fox hailed the command center and gave her report.

 

* * *

 

At first, the news that the pirates had successfully been driven away, and the eastern patrol and those sent to assist were on their way back, was welcome. But when it had been followed with the news that Locus was nowhere to be found, it took Kimball everything she had to keep her composure.

Of _course_ he had run off. Of _course_ he hadn’t planned on sticking around and helping like he said he would. Of _course_ she shouldn’t have trusted him as much as she had. And when Fox walked in with Wash and Carolina, all three soaked from the storm, Kimball drew herself up and readied for an unpleasant conversation.

“I want you to explain everything,” she said, looking pointedly at Fox. “From what Tucker and the others told me on the way in, he just vanished.”

Fox sucked in a deep breath, let it out slowly, and replied, “I was providing support. There were a few stragglers who could have caused problems for the rest of the group if they weren’t taken care of. I wasn’t expecting Locus to wander off, so I took my eyes off of him.”

Kimball let out a frustrated sigh. “This was not your fault alone,” she began. “ _Locus_ is the one who chose to leave, and the rest of the men present at the time did nothing to stop him. This is _exactly_ why I’ve been hesitant to assimilate him.” She shook her head and looked away.  “The main concern I have is that now we’re going to have to send out a search party.”

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary, honestly,” Fox replied.

“What do you mean?” Wash asked, turning to her.

“He’ll come back,” Fox replied, then looked back at Kimball and said, “he’s got nowhere else to go. He’ll come back. We need to trust that.”

“He was able to find a ship before,” Carolina replied.

“Yeah, but that’s because there was a ship for him to _take._ There’s nothing left,” Fox responded, turning to her. “And you can’t convince me that he’s spent these past two months working with me and showing all this improvement just to throw it all away. There has to be more to it than what we’re seeing. According to what Tucker told us, Locus mentioned to him that he’s going to ‘finish this,’ which probably means that he’s planning on going after the pirates that escaped.”

“But that doesn’t _guarantee_ that he’s coming back,” Kimball said exasperatedly. “We clearly put too much trust in him before. We can’t possibly expect that he’s going to do the right thing, _especially_ when you consider his history.”

“I mean, _fair._ But if we’re going off of history, I think it’s important to also consider his recent actions. I mean, he’s done nothing to suggest that he was planning to run off like this,” Fox explained. “You wanted evidence that he was on our side for good, Kimball. And when he comes back, I think you’ll finally have it.”

“ _If_ he comes back,” Kimball corrected.

 _“When,”_ Fox said firmly.

Kimball took a deep breath and looked over at Carolina, who simply gave her a nod. Yes, there was some truth to Fox’s words. If Locus had planned on running off, he could have easily done so after meeting her on the cliff two weeks ago. But it didn’t change the fact that he was gone _now._ Frustrated, Kimball looked back at Fox and said “here’s what we’re going to do; I’m going to send a patrol about a mile farther than normal every day. If we find something that way, then we’ll hone in on it. I’d send a full search party, but we’ve lost enough men to these pirates as it is, so this is the next best thing.” She looked over at Carolina and Wash, then back to Fox. “I want one of you three on those patrols as well, to increase our odds of convincing him to return if he’s found, understand?”

“Copy that,” Wash replied as Carolina said, “understood.”

Fox, however, tilted her head and didn’t respond right away, and Kimball turned to her. “Fox?”

“No, I understand, I’m just thinking,” Fox replied.

Kimball narrowed her eyes at her, then looked over at Wash and Carolina again and said, “you’re dismissed.” She watched them leave, and turned back to Fox, who hadn’t moved. “Mind sharing?” she asked after a moment.

Fox shrugged, “I was just thinking that you put your trust in him for a reason.” She turned towards the exit, then looked back over her shoulder and said, “maybe you shouldn’t question your judgement so much.”

Kimball stared after her as she walked away, then turned her gaze to the floor and listened to the office doors slide shut.

 

* * *

 

“L-look, I know we might’ve maybe hurt a few of your friends. And that you might be kinda mad about it. And--and you’re probably thinking ‘h-hey, maybe I should just kill these guys.’ But you’ve got another choice y-y’know? A-and the answer m- _may_ surprise you--”

“Be quiet”

“Okay. Yeah. I’m shutting up. Totally not going to hear a sound from me ever again. Got it. Lips are zipped.”

“Dude, he said _shut up_.”

“I’m _trying!_ I talk a lot when I’m nervous-- _ow!_ You don’t have to _elbow_ me!”

“Holy fuck he’s going to get us killed.”

“I’m _trying_ to shut him up!”

“I’m _sorry--_ wait, hey w-what’s that? Oh god, what is that?! Oh god oh god oh god--”

“Dude _chill,_ it’s a cable.”

“Oh thank _fuck_! I thought it was a snake!”

“It doesn’t even-- Are you fucking _blind?!_ ”

“Well, I have a stigmatism in my right eye--”

“ _Please_ kill him first--”

“What?! No!”

“--or I _will_.”

“But I thought we were bros?!”

“We _were_ until we got tied to the back of a _Warthog_ in the middle of the _jungle_ by a dude who’s _supposed_ to be _dead_ , and you refused to _shut up!”_

Locus let out a long sigh, and finished using the cable he had grabbed from the pirate encampment to tie his three hostages to the back of the Warthog he had commandeered.

Catching the pirates off guard wasn’t difficult, as they were all too busy licking their wounds from their earlier fight next to the remaining Pelican. One of them he recognized as the sniper he had knocked out during the first assault on the New Republic headquarters. He had been holding down the camp when the other two arrived. Locus had picked them off one by one shortly after.

Now it was a matter of keeping the three of them securely in the back of the Warthog with no means of escape while he dragged them back through unfamiliar territory to Kimball for questioning. It would all be less of a hassle if they would just be _quiet_.

He finished tying the three up, and was about to stand up, when the pirate in the middle looked over his shoulder at him and spoke up.

“H-hey, uh, not to be a bother, but these cables are _really_ tight…”

Locus stared at him, trying to think of something smart to say, then gave up and simply gave the pirate a hard smack to the back of the head with the butt of his gun, knocking him out. The other two pirates fell deathly silent, and Locus looked at both of them and said, “any more requests?”

Both pirates shook their heads feverently.

“Good,” Locus said, then stood and jumped off the back of the Warthog and headed for the driver’s side. He hopped in and revved the engine, and in a matter of seconds they were started up the hill towards headquarters.

The ride back was difficult, as the storm made navigating the jungle far more trying than it otherwise would have been. Locus found himself having to drive much slower than he normally would to try to pick out familiar landmarks, as the map on his hud was only so useful. Eventually he came to a stop at the edge of a cliff, and looking down, was met with the familiar sight of the New Republic headquarters.

He was about to start towards the trail down, but froze when he heard the sound of a gun clicking behind him over the rain pattering against the foliage. He slowly turned his head in the direction of the noise, and found himself staring at a trio of Federation soldiers, with Carolina at their head. He held her gaze for a moment, and when she refused to lower her guns, said, “I’m not a threat.”

“Where did you get the Warthog?” She asked.

“It was at the pirate encampment, along with these three,” he nodded at the three pirates huddled in the back.

Carolina looked over at the pirates, then slowly lowered her guns and holstered them. She turned to the soldier to her right and said, “contact General Kimball,” then headed around to get a better look at the pirates.

Locus followed her with his eyes for a moment, then looked back at the soldier she had addressed, watching as he raised his hand to the side of his helmet and said, “General Kimball? Ma’am, you’re not gonna believe this.”

 

* * *

 

Carolina and her team escorted Locus and the pirates back to the motorpool of the New Republic headquarters, where Kimball, Fox, Wash, and a handful of soldiers were waiting for them. While the pirates were being unloaded from the back of the Warthog, Locus kept an eye on Kimball, who was watching the whole ordeal several feet away with her arms crossed.

“Bring them down to the cells and hold them for questioning,” Kimball said to the soldiers who had accompanied Carolina. “You four assist them,” she added, glancing back towards the other men standing beside Wash and Fox.

Locus watched with growing tension as the pirates were led away, his gaze drawn by Carolina as she walked over to stand beside Kimball.

Kimball stared him down for a moment, frustration radiating from her, then uncrossed her arms and drew in a breath like she was going to speak, but cut off when Fox put a hand on her arm and softly said, “let me handle this.”

Kimball turned her head and looked at Fox, her body language unreadable. She then glanced over at Locus before looking back to the other woman, let out a sigh, and said, “you have two minutes.”

Fox gave her a grateful nod and started towards him, stopping short a few feet and looking up at him. She was silent for a moment, and Locus braced himself for what was likely to be a very harsh scolding.

“So...you probably could have gone about all of this a little better,” Fox began slowly, catching Locus off guard with the calmness of her tone. “You definitely made a lot of people here worry.”

“There are no more pirates left. The remaining three would have only called for help, or caused more trouble had I not brought them back,” Locus replied. “It was the right thing to do.”

“Well, I never said it wasn’t--”

“Then what is the issue?”

“Listen, listen, just... _look at me,_ okay?” Fox said exasperatedly.

And Locus did, fully expecting to be yelled at.

But instead of yelling, Fox said, in a gentler voice than before, “I get it okay? I get it.” She let out a sigh that seemed to deflate her a little before continuing. “You want to help. And I know that, and I think that’s great. Like, clearly you're not the horrible person everyone’s told me you were anymore. And that’s awesome. But these people don’t _realize_ that yet.”

There it was. Locus slowly balled his hands into fists at his sides to try to quell his frustration.

“The boundaries that Kimball and I put in place are there to prevent everyone else from feeling threatened.”

Like he was a tiger in a cage. Of course.

“And I need you to understand and respect those boundaries, because humans have an awful, _awful_ track record for doing _terrible_ shit when they feel threatened.”

 _Don’t make it sound like you’re trying to protect me,_ Locus thought bitterly.

Fox looked away and rubbed her arm, then started again. “You know, it wouldn’t be so bad if you had taken me with you.” She looked back at him again. “We’re partners, you know? What if something had happened to you?”

“Why would it matter?” The words were out before Locus had time to think about them, and he recoiled with a hiss between his teeth. And he watched as Fox drew herself up, shoulders tense.

“Because you’re a human fucking being, and you’re just as important as anyone else around here,” Fox replied, her voice turning cold and angry and low. “ _And_ you’re my partner, so it’s my _job_ to care about you.” And she was quiet for a moment, letting the tension slowly leave her before she spoke again, “I can’t guarantee that things are going to be the same anymore. Kimball put her trust in you, and you kinda blew it. I know it was for a good reason. But Kimball didn’t think you were coming back.” She sighed. “I guess the best thing you could do right now is explain what your whole thought process was. Y’know, why you did what you did and whatnot. It might help pull you out of the fire a bit, is all,” Fox suggested, looking back at Kimball, who perked up immediately when she did so.

“Well?” Kimball asked.

Fox shrugged. “Those were the last three pirates on the planet. Apparently.”

Kimball nodded at Locus, “is this true?”

“There were no others at their encampment, and there’s no reason to believe there are any left elsewhere,” Locus replied.

“Was there any sign of the Pelican?”

“It was there as well. Unattended.”

Kimball put her hands on her hips and looked over at Wash and Carolina. If she was speaking to them, it was over a private channel so Locus couldn’t hear her. After a moment she looked up and seemed to think for a moment before she turned and started back the way she had come. “Walk with me,” she said.

Locus found himself exchanging a look with Fox before the two of them caught up to her, Wash, and Carolina. They walked for a while in silence, heading in the direction of Kimball’s office. Kimball herself seemed to be processing everything, keeping quiet nearly the whole way there before she finally spoke up when they reached the elevator. “Fox had a lot of faith that you would come back,” she said, looking over her shoulder at him.

Locus looked down at Fox, and she simply shrugged at him. “I... had no reason not to,” he replied, looking back at Kimball.

“She said the same thing.”

“We should be able to get some good information out of the pirates he brought back. Do you want us to head on down and see what we can do?” Wash asked suddenly.

“Doctor Grey is on it,” Kimball replied without looking at him.

“Oh,” Wash said, and Locus could have sworn he saw him shudder.

“However, a more familiar face might prompt them to talk much faster.” Locus blinked in confusion when Kimball’s gaze shifted from him to Fox.

Fox met her gaze and gave her a nod, then looked up at him and said, “you know where the interrogation rooms are, right?”

“I do,” he replied, barely keeping the confusion from his voice. There had just been an exchange between her and Kimball, but he had no idea what it was about, and that made him uneasy.

“You’re sending him alone?” Carolina asked.

Kimball simply nodded at her, then looked back to the elevator when it gave a hearty _ding_ and the doors slid open. Her, Wash, and Carolina filed in, but Fox stayed back for a moment, looking up at him and saying, “don’t worry too much, okay?” before stepping into the elevator.

Locus watched as the doors slid shut, trying to figure out exactly what she meant by that. Then he turned and headed in the direction of the interrogation rooms, feeling a headache start to emerge. This day just wouldn’t end.

 

* * *

 

When they reached Kimball’s office, the Reds and Blues were already waiting for them. Kimball had contacted them on the lift up about a major decision being made. Wash wondered if it had anything to do with the silent exchange she’d had with Fox earlier, or the talk of assimilating Locus he’d heard through the grapevine from Carolina and Grey.

Kimball made herself comfortable, leaning back against the edge of her desk. Wash felt her gaze sweep over all of them, lingering a moment longer on Fox, who had situated herself next to Carolina. “For these past two weeks, I have been thinking hard about the next step to take with Locus would be,” Kimball began.

And like that, the tension in the room rose ever so slightly. Wash glanced over at Carolina, but she didn’t return his gaze, and instead focused on Kimball.

“Prior to Fox revealing the truth about her identity to us, her and I discussed the possibility of assimilating Locus in with the rest of you, and my men,” Kimball explained.

 _Well, at least it’s nothing unexpected,_ Wash thought, shifting his weight to one side.

“Okay, so just so we’re on the same page here, the guy just broke like _half_ of the rules set in place for him, and we’re rewarding him for it?” Grif asked incredulously.

“I mean, he came _back_ ,” Donut mused.

“Aw, c’mon _Grif!_ You break rules all the time, and we still like _you,_ ” Caboose replied.

“It’s not the same!” Grif exclaimed.

“Yeah,” Tucker agreed, looking over at Fox. “What if he’s just trying to get us to trust him, so he can turn on us later?”

“Considering how much of a terrible liar he’s turned out to be, I don’t think he’s going to try that,” Fox said, shaking her head.

Wash looked back at Kimball, who was listening to the debate intently. “Truthfully,” she said, and her tone was that of someone who was thinking hard about their words, “if I were to be honest, I would say that any hostility Locus has towards us has vanished.”

And like that, the room fell silent.

“Well that was a fucking one-eighty,” Grif muttered.

Kimball looked at him. “Actually...it’s not.” She took a deep breath, then said “two weeks ago, Locus sought me out and... _apologized_. It was...enlightening...in the sense that it made his motivations clear. But I...well, I suppose I didn’t realize it until just now.” She looked away, towards the others. “Before the attack today, I wanted more evidence that he wasn’t going to walk away the second we gave him enough freedom to do so. Fox suggested he be sent on a solo mission with someone tailing him to keep tabs on his actions. However, in light of what took place a few minutes ago, it’s clear we won’t need to. He single-handedly eliminated the threat of another attack by capturing the remaining three pirates, and then came back on his own, despite having no reason to.” Kimball paused for a moment, and looked over at Fox. “I think, by now, it’s clear where his loyalty lies.”

“Okay, that’s cool and all, but did no one hear what I just said?” Tucker asked.

“Okay, I guess I need to make this monosyllabic for you,” Fox said, tilting her head at him. _“Locus is a bad liar._ Believe me. If he was trying to deceive you guys, I would have figured it out by now.”

And Wash finally found his tongue. “Honestly,” he spoke up with a sigh, “if you take a look at how him and Fox have been working together these past two months, I think it’s safe to say that letting Locus out of his cell permanently won’t really change anything. I mean, him and Fox already have the full day together as it is. And with the hold that Fox has on him, and how much he trusts her _already_ , I don’t think he would do anything that would result in further harm.”

Carolina, Kimball, Fox, and the Reds and Blues all stared at him, and he couldn’t help but feel a little self-conscious.

“Are you…serious about this?” Tucker asked, and something in his voice made Wash look over at him.

“I’m not saying I’m in _love_ with the idea,” Wash replied, after a moment of thought. “But I am saying that...I mean, he saved your _life_ , Tucker. And in the fight before this one, Grey, Jensen, _and_ myself wouldn’t _be_ here if it wasn’t for him.”

“So we’re just gonna ignore everything else he’s done because he helped us a few times?!” Simmons exclaimed.

“Well, no--”

“Nobody said we’re ignoring anything, Simmons. We’re just trying to put him in a position where we can... get the most use out of him, so to speak,” Fox soothed.

“Guys, come on! Look, _none_ of us _like_ the guy, but it’s not like he’s trying to _kill_ us anymore!” Donut spoke up, much to Wash’s surprise.

“And what if that changes?” Simmons asked.

“Like, okay, okay, so he stopped me from falling off a fucking cliff. And yeah, he said he was gonna go ‘make things right’ at the Tower of Communications or whatever. But like, we don’t _know_ that he’s not still a complete _dick_ ,” Tucker added.

“Let the record stand that I never said he _wasn’t_ ,” Fox replied. “But if he _really_ didn’t _care_ about trying to fix everything he did, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of jumping into danger for any of us. Myself included.”

“Exactly!” Donut exclaimed. He turned and looked at Simmons and Grif, and continued “besides, we all know Locus is scared of Fox. If he tries anything, she’ll just kick his ass!”

“Or one of _us_ will,” Carolina added.

Wash sighed, feeling a headache beginning to develop between his eyes. “All I’m saying is that we should give it a chance. Fox has proven more than once that she can keep him on a tight leash if she needs to.”

“Why _thank you_ , Stripes,” Fox said.

“I say we give it a shot!” Sarge added. Wash looked over at him with slight surprise. “After all, the enemy of our enemy is our friend!”

“Yeah, and making friends is always nice,” Caboose said, nodding sagely.

“Friends is a bit of a stretch, Caboose,” Tucker said.

 _“Big_ fuckin’ stretch,” Grif muttered.

“You’re _sure_ that this isn’t going to be _any_ different from how things have been going with the two of you so far?” Simmons asked, sounding like he really just wanted clarification.

“We still need to work out the details, but rest assured that there will still be considerable distance between all of you and him,” Kimball replied with a nod.

“Lord, I can only _imagine_ how it would go if he wound up bunk-buddies with one of you knuckleheads,” Fox said, a laugh in her voice.

Wash didn’t pay attention to what was said next, as he withdrew into his own thoughts. Considering their circumstances, and based on everything that they had seen so far, assimilating Locus among the rest of them really did make the most sense. Fox and Locus had proven numerous times by now that they had near-perfect synergy in a fight together, so having them ready to help when the pirates showed up again would certainly take care of the problem far faster than if one of them needed to be escorted up from the cell block whenever the alarms started going. And he said so, earning him a curious look from both Fox and Kimball.

“So...let me get this straight,” Fox began, “you’re on _my_ _side_ with this?”

“I am,” Wash said with a nod, and he looked at the others, feeling like he should say something. “I know that things have been...shaky...these past few months. But at the end of the day, we have to weigh our options. And if our choices are giving Locus more freedom, or losing more of our friends, I think it’s a pretty easy decision to make.” He looked back at Kimball, and noticed with surprise that she was nodding.

“Does anyone have anything else they would like to add?” Kimball asked, looking around. When no one spoke up, she said, “Fox and I will continue to discuss this, and come to an agreement on a new set of boundaries for him. Once this has been done, you will all be notified.” She paused, then looked over at Fox. “Regardless of whatever changes are made, however, if he steps out of line, things _will_ go back to the way they were before.”

“Understood,” Fox replied.

Wash caught her gaze and gave her a nod.

“Does this mean we can invite Locust to pool parties now?” Caboose asked suddenly.

“We don’t even _have_ a pool!” Tucker exclaimed.

“Not with that attitude we don’t!” Donut replied.

“Yeah Tucker, you just gotta believe!” Caboose added.

Wash just met Kimball’s gaze and shook his head in amusement, and she nodded back, then looked up suddenly. Wash glanced around to see what could have gotten her attention, but when he saw that nothing in the room had changed, he realized that she must have gotten a message over comms. He exchanged a glance with Carolina, who seemed just as interested in whatever information Kimball had just received.

Kimball took in a deep breath, then pushed off from the edge of her desk and stood upright. “If I could have everyone’s attention for just a moment.”

It took a few seconds for the clamour to die down, but when it did, she continued.

“Grey has just informed me that she has finished interrogating the pirates. I’m headed down there to meet her. The rest of you are dismissed,” Kimball said.

“That was fast!” Simmons exclaimed.

“Well, we _did_ send Locus down there too,” Carolina mused.

“Jesus Christ tell me you’re joking,” Grif said, looking at her.

“Well I’m goin’ down there! If those dirty space pirates got somethin’ to say, I wanna hear it!” Sarge proclaimed.

“We should go down there too,” Tucker suggested.

Wash glanced over at him, then looked back at Kimball and shrugged. “I guess we’re all going with you.”

“I guess so,” she sighed, then started towards the door, the Reds and Blues parting out of her way as she walked past. “Let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

A couple of fancy maneuvers with a bone saw, and a good half-hour, and the pirates were squealing like the little piggies they were. Grey looked over the notes Doc took on a datapad while the pirates were carted off to the medical wing. She finished reviewing them, nodding to herself when she saw that everything the pirates had told her was there, saved the document, and handed the datapad back to Doc. She turned to Locus, who had all but sunken into the corner of the room with his arms crossed, nearly blending in with the shadows.

She had been taken off guard when she received word that he was on his way down to help her, but he’d been rather helpful in getting information out of the pirates, doing a very effective job of looming over them and generally sounding and looking _immensely_ threatening. “Kimball and the Reds and Blues are on their way down,” she said, keeping her gaze locked on him for a moment before she looked around at the others in the room with her. “So everyone be on their best behavior, and leave the talking to me.”

And as if on cue, the doors to the observation room slid open and Kimball, Fox, and the Reds and Blues filed in.

“Excellent timing!” Grey chimed, turning towards them. “We just got everything in order! Doc, sweetie, hand that datapad over to General Kimball, will you?”

“Sure thing,” Doc said, handing it off, then stepping out of the way.

“This is everything you got out of them?” Kimball asked as she scrolled through the notes.

“It is,” Grey replied, noting out of the corner of her eye how Fox stepped away from the group and went to stand by Locus. “From what those three told us, they and their friends are a group of mercenaries hired under the table by Charon. Apparently they were employed at a space station in the next system over, where _The Staff of Charon_ was being repaired. Unfortunately, none of them were able to give me any information regarding the ship’s whereabouts.”

“It’s likely still docked,” Fox spoke up. “Based on what I saw a few months ago, and was able to pick up over the radio, the ship was in pretty bad shape. Something that size would take more than two or three months to fix.”

“With the damage _we_ did to that thing, I’d say you’re probably right about that,” Simmons agreed, nodding at her.

“Unfortunately, there’s no real way to assess whether or not that’s correct, because according to the pirates, Control wasn’t exactly giving away their position,” Grey explained. As much as she hoped Fox was right, it was silly to get everyone excited when they really had no _clue_ as to the ship’s whereabouts.

“It says here that they were sent to ‘clean up the mess Epsilon left and remove all witnesses,’” Kimball read aloud.

“So basically, they’re picking up where they left off,” Grif said, crossing his arms. “Perfect.”

“Strange that they didn’t send more men,” Wash mused.

“Maybe they thought more of us died on Nalome?” Fox shrugged.

“ _Ha!_ Like they can take us down that easily!” Sarge laughed.

“Regardless,” Kimball said, waving her hand dismissively and handing the datapad back to Grey, “we need to figure out the ship’s location, and where it’s headed next. We can’t be taken by surprise again.”

Grey tapped the side of the datapad absently, thinking hard for a moment. Over the past few months, Kimball had kept her up to date with everything that was going on. The two things that had stuck in her mind the most were that the U.N.S.C. would possibly ignore Epsilon’s broadcast owing to the fact that he was an AI from Project Freelancer, and that Hargrove knew exactly what he was up against _because_ of the broadcast. No doubt the U.N.S.C. had finally started their investigation by now, and there was a good chance that if Hargrove was _not_ already on Earth, preparing for trial, then he was still on his ship, and was stalling. And if he was _stalling,_ then it would make perfect sense, because the pirates had kept attacking them, even after being defeated the first time. Which meant they were still receiving orders, which meant they were still being paid, which meant that Hargrove was in a position where he could still _pay_ them. Which meant that the U.N.S.C. hadn’t quite tightened their grip around him. Which meant that he probably _wasn’t_ on Earth, because the U.N.S.C. would have _ordered_ him there if they were ready for the _trial_ . Which meant that the ship had to either be _still_ docked for repairs (hadn’t there been engine damage? She could have _sworn_ there had been engine damage), _or_ it was headed for Charon Industries’ headquarters near Jupiter.

Satisfied with the answer she had thought up, Grey said, “I don’t think the ship is going to be a threat to us for a good while.”

“What makes you say that?” Carolina asked.

“Well, logically speaking, if the U.N.S.C. had tightened their grip on Hargrove, he wouldn’t be able to send orders to the pirates to keep attacking us, or provide pay to them as incentive to do so. Which means that the ship is probably still docked for repairs,” Grey explained. “We all saw the way it was smoking when it flew away. I think it’s fair to say that Fox is right; the repairs they need are more than just a few window replacements and an oil change!”

“ _Or_ it’s docked at headquarters, on Io, one of Jupiter’s moons,” Fox added, prompting Grey to look at her in surprise.

“You read my mind!” she exclaimed.

Fox shrugged, “I mean, it just makes sense, is all. Even if they aren’t there yet, I’m willing to bet that Hargrove is gonna make a stop there to make sure that any dirt on him is being burned.”

“The real question is what we _do_ with this information,” Kimball said.

“Well obviously we gotta stop that ship from leavin’ port!” Sarge exclaimed.

“Okay, but how?” Grif asked.

“Oh! Oh!” Caboose exclaimed. “We could ask Sheila to tell Mangrove that the ship is still broken so he won’t leave!”

“Sheila?” Fox asked.

“He means F.I.L.S.S.” Wash replied. “She’s an AI from Project Freelancer that Hargrove got a hold of somehow.”

“She helped us kick Hargrove’s ass!” Tucker added. Then his shoulders sank slightly, and he added “she’s probably dead, though.”

“Well, unless we can confirm otherwise, she’s no use to us,” Grey said simply. They needed a _plan_ , not a _maybe._

“Hold on,” Fox said, staring at the floor. “Caboose, I’m sorry about your friend. But...but I _do_ think you’re onto something here.”

“Okay _what?”_ Grif asked incredulously.

“No no no, listen okay,” Fox said, holding up a hand and looking around at everyone. “We don’t know if Sheila can make the ship seem like there’s still something wrong with it, but we _do_ have something that _can._ ”

Grey exchanged a look with Kimball. “Elaborate,” she said.

“The quantum computer that we’ve all been working on!” Fox exclaimed, looking at Locus, then back at her.

“Okay, but how would we even get that thing out there, sneak it onto the ship, and plug it in to _do_ that?” Simmons asked.

“Oh, no, it would access the ship remotely,” Fox said. And like that the whole room got dead silent. Fox glanced around, aware that all eyes were now on her.

“You’re saying you can hack the ship with that thing?” Grey asked incredulously.

“Yep,” Fox nodded. “I mean, I accessed the ship with it when it passed by Nalome before.”

“But the ship was close by when you did that,” Wash said. “There’s no way it has the range to reach it now.”

“Well I mean, you guys have plenty of satellites around here,” Fox replied.

“We could use the one we built at Crash Site Bravo!” Donut exclaimed. “I mean, if we were able use it to send an S.O.S. back when comms were down around here, it _should_ be able to reach the ship, right?”

“If it was able to cut through the barrier created by the alien technology on this planet, then there’s a good chance it has a stronger signal than any of the satellites you have here,” Locus agreed, looking over at Kimball.

“Well, there’s no sense in not tryin’!” Sarge exclaimed. “And if it’ll give that lousy, good-fer-nothin’ chairman a hell of a day, then I say we give it a shot!”

“Lopez and I could help out too!” Simmons added eagerly, sounding like a kid who had just been told they were going to Disneyland.

“We can all help,” Wash spoke up, nodding at Fox. “You just point us in the right direction.”

Grey noted how Fox seemed to look to Kimball for help, wondering if she was uncertain about being in a position to tell others what to do, or if she was looking for permission to do so.

“Then we have a plan,” Kimball said with a nod. “ Fox, Grey, Locus, I want you to finish setting that computer up. Reds and Blues, you work together to bring that satellite back here. Use whatever resources you need. Once we have everything set up, we’ll move forward.”

Under her helmet, Grey’s face broke into a smile. _Now_ they were getting somewhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> JUST IN TIME FOR THE NEW YEAR BOOYAH!!  
> *Wheeze* those illustrations were a PAIN to do.  
> I was actually gonna make four of them, but after all that work I was just like “nah.”  
> Not AS long of a chapter as these past few have been. Don't get used to that lol /('~')>
> 
> I wanted to focus more on the BGC since EVERYONE else has been getting loads more focus. Sorry Kimball. You sat this fight out lol.  
> I DEFINITELY based the Mantis' dialogue of off Loaderbot from "Tales From The Borderlands" and I am not sorry for it. 
> 
> Shitty Google Translate Spanish:  
> 1) “Son of a bitch!”  
> 2) “We’re fucking blind….They’re hiding in the bushes.”  
> 3) “Shit.”  
> 4) “That was the stupidest thing I have ever seen.”  
> 5) “Robots can’t die, you idiot.”  
> 6) “What did you expect the grenade to do?”
> 
> Pretty sure Lopez swears, but if he doesn't, feel free to launch a Whirlpool Side by Side 36 in. Refrigerator™ through my bedroom window and kill me instantly. 
> 
> Promethean Vision, motherfuckers.
> 
> PALOMO IS SO FUCKING HARD TO WRITE AUGH! He’s like a fusion between Tucker and Caboose and *SCREECH*. So naturally since he’s so fucking hard to write, I wrote his perspective anyways. Because we’re going to be seeing more stuff through his eyes eventually. So I’d better get comfy. 
> 
> God help me. 
> 
> Sarge is in an interesting mental place right now, so we’ll get to see more of it next chapter :>  
> He is also tough to write, but thankfully I had a grandpa with a pretty similar personality, so I can sort of figure him out.
> 
> ...“maybe you shouldn’t question your judgement so much.” Ok Fox chill tf out you don't have to dig that deep holy shit.
> 
> Fox has (un)officially replaced the Orange Trash Boy. What could possibly go wrong? Find out on the next episode of Kirby: Right Back At ‘Ya!, only on T H E F O X B O X!  
> Listen man that show was the SHIT
> 
> Agent “Listen Man Just Let Me Voice My Opinion No Don’t All Stare At Me You’re Making It Weird Goddamnit” Washington


	16. Calibration

* * *

“Do you think it’ll work?” 

Grif stopped fiddling with the roll of stretch wrap in his hands and looked over when Tucker spoke. “What, you mean Fox’s plan?”

Tucker, who was in the process of trying to wind up a set of cables, nodded. 

“Fuck if I know,” Grif replied with a shrug before returning his attention to the equipment on the pallet he had been wrapping. It had taken a full day for them to recon the area of Crash Site Bravo then scrape together enough resources to come back and dismantle the satellite. At least now they were getting somewhere. Grif finished wrapping up the equipment on the pallet and grabbed the end of one of the two cargo straps that had been run under the pallet before it was stacked. He made quick work of tying everything down, then stepped back and looked up towards the top of the satellite tower, squinting for the few seconds it took for his visor’s filters to adjust to the afternoon sunlight. 

Up at the top of the tower, Carolina and Sarge were working on getting the satellite down. Simmons and Bitters had devised a sort of makeshift pulley system that had already been attached to it. The main problem now was getting it  _ unscrewed _ . Judging by the banter Grif had only been half-listening to, much of the metal was rusted into place. The result of the jungle’s ridiculously high humidity, no doubt. 

“How’s it looking, boss?” 

Grif jumped when he heard Wash shout up to Carolina from directly behind him. He turned and glared at him, earning what might have been a surprised look from Wash. Then he looked up when Carolina spoke up.

“It’s going slower than I’d like!” she called down.

“Quit yer fussin’, Wash!” Sarge added. “It’s not like this thing’s goin’ anywhere!”

Grif looked over when Wash let out a sigh, then turned and met his gaze. “What are you working on?” he asked.

Grif looked around, realizing that there really wasn’t anything else  _ to _ work on, other than the satellite. “Waiting on them, I guess,” he replied, nodding up at Sarge and Carolina. 

Wash simply nodded, then looked over his shoulder. Grif followed his gaze and spotted Andersmith steering the forklift over to the pallet he had finished working on. As he watched, Andersmith drove the supplies to the other end of the valley and into the back of the Condor they had rode in on. Bored, but not enough so to take a nap, Grif opted to head over to the Condor, where he knew Simmons and Palomo were strapping all the equipment down. “I’m going to check on Simmons,” he said as he started away from Wash, not waiting for a reply. 

“Where are you going?” Bitters asked as Grif passed him. 

Grif paused and looked down at where his lieutenant was sitting cross-legged next to where one of the cables attached to the pulley supporting the satellite was tethered. He was probably waiting for Carolina’s signal to grab it and ease the satellite down once it was attached, Grif realized. “To take a look at how things are going in the Condor. What are  _ you _ doing?”

Bitters nodded at the tangled mess of cables on the ground in front of him. “Captain Tucker asked for our help with these.”

“He couldn’t fix his own mess?” Grif asked, amused. Earlier in the day when they had been unhooking all of the cables, Tucker had brushed off Wash’s suggestion that they rolled them as they went. Naturally, this had resulted in a tangle that took on the appearance of a massive clump of rainbow spaghetti at the base of the satellite tower. Two hours in and they still hadn’t gotten them all untied. 

“Obviously not,” Bitters said flatly, managing to work one of the cables free and starting to wind it up. “Speak of the devil.”

“Jesus, Smith! Why didn’t you offer to help out sooner?”

Grif and Bitters looked over when Tucker stopped near Andersmith, who was crouching next to one of the other pulley tethers. Beside him were several loops of cable.

Cheerily, Andersmith replied “well, I was helping Captain Caboose with--”

“Yeah I don’t care. Just keep up the good work,” Tucker cut him off. He then looked over and spotted Grif, “hey. Help me carry some of these. They’re heavy!”

Grif let out a short huff.  _ Sure, make me do all the heavy lifting, _ he thought, rolling his eyes behind his helmet. But he didn’t argue. Besides, he was going to the Condor anyways. Might as well bring something with him to load in. 

Tucker tossed him two loops of cables that were surprisingly heavy, then shouldered the other two and started towards the Condor. Grif did the same, catching up and matching Tucker’s step. They made it about halfway before Tucker spoke up suddenly.

“I wish they’d just hurry up,” he said.

“You realize this is  _ Carolina _ we’re talking about? She’s a fucking perfectionist. I don’t know what you expected,” Grif replied.

“Yeah, but still. I don’t like leaving Locus back at headquarters when all of us are here,” Tucker replied moodily.

“It’s not like they’re holding down the fort by themselves,” Grif replied. “I don’t like it either, but Kimball seems to think that Locus isn’t going to fuck with anyone anymore. Plus her, Fox, Grey, and a bunch of the others are all back there with her. It’s not like he could try anything even if he wanted to.”

“Still,” Tucker said, then fell silent.

The silence lasted until they reached the Condor, where Grif could hear Simmons’ voice floating out of the back of the ship. It sounded like he was complaining about something, Grif realized with a small amused smile appearing on his face under his helmet.

“Seriously, I don’t know how they expected us to get  _ all _ of this stuff strapped down. I mean these bungee cords aren’t even  _ long _ enough!” Stepping inside the Condor, Grif was met with the sight of Simmons struggling to pull a bungee cord over the top of a stack of equipment and attach the hooked end to one of the rungs in the floor of the ship. Beside him, Palomo watched helplessly. Grif figured that Simmons had shooed him away so he’d have more space to strap down the pallet of equipment. 

“Do you want some help?” Grif asked, prompting Simmons to look up sharply, lose his grip on the end of the cord, and get smacked in the chin by the hook as it sprang back over the stack of hardware. 

“Jesus  _ fuck! _ ” Simmons yelped, clapping a hand over the chin of his helmet. 

“I asked him that earlier, and he gave me pretty much the same response,” Palomo replied. 

“You  _ should _ have gone and found Caboose,” Tucker said, pushing past Grif to shove his two loops of cable into a crate close to the cockpit of the ship. 

Grif tossed his cables to him, and turned back to Simmons, who had risen to his feet, still rubbing at his chin. “Wanna let me try?” he asked.

“I’ll get the cord!” Palomo exclaimed enthusiastically before Simmons had a chance to respond, and dove behind the stack of equipment to get it. 

“Be my guest,” Simmons grumbled. 

Grif turned to reach for the cord, but jerked back in surprise when he saw Palomo’s hand poking up over the stack of supplies, grasping the hook.

“Here you go,” Palomo said with a grunt of effort as he pulled his upper body up onto the stack, pretty much laying across the extended length of the cord.

Grif took the end of it from him, then asked “what are you doing?”

“Uh, holding the cord down, so it doesn’t go over to this side again,” Palomo replied. “Why?”

“What’s sad is that’s probably the smartest idea you’ve ever come up with,” Tucker said with a grin in his voice.

“You know you’re gonna get hit in the face if I lose this thing, right?” Grif warned Palomo.

“On second thought, that’s a stupid idea, and you should totally hit him in the face,” Tucker said.

“You just said it was a smart idea two seconds ago!” Palomo cried.

“Well, to be fair, Tucker doesn’t really know much about physics,” Simmons offered.

“Or chemistry,” Grif added, a lopsided grin under his helmet. “Since he hasn’t been able to get a date since I’ve met him.”

“Man, fuck you,” Tucker huffed.

Grif just chuckled, shaking his head, then focused on yanking the bungee cord down. Hands shaking from the resistance, he managed to push it down far enough to hook it onto one of the rungs in the floor. 

“Hey, you got it!” Simmons exclaimed.

“I  _ totally _ helped,” Palomo declared and slid off of the stack. The second his feet hit the ground, however, there was a metallic scraping sound, and the hook from his side shot up over the top of the stack.

Grif stayed crouched, staring at his wasted effort with irritation, then looked up when Palomo let out a pained hiss.

“Oh god. My balls,” Palomo squeaked, then doubled over. 

Over by the cockpit, Tucker burst out laughing. “Oh god that was better than I ever could have imagined!”

Grif stood and leaned around the stack to get a better look at Palomo, who was on his knees with his hands between his legs. “It can’t have hit you that hard,” he said, shaking his head.

“You don’t know tha-ha-haaaat!” Palomo whined. Then in a weaker, raspy voice, rattled out “fifty miles per hour of force right to the balls. I’m going to  _ die.” _

“There’s no  _ way _ that was fifty miles per hour of force,” Simmons said. “It was probably closer to twenty.”

“Oh god. I see a light. Should I go towards it?” Palomo gasped.

“Oh my  _ god _ cut the dramatics! Grif got punched like eight times in the dick by a human monster truck and he was just  _ fine! _ ” Tucker exclaimed.

_ “Thanks _ Tucker,” Grif sighed.

“Let’s just,  _ not _ tie this thing down,” Simmons suggested. “Clearly it’s not going to stay put.”

“Yeah, and I’d hate to have to listen to my lieutenant be a fucking pansy again,” Tucker agreed.

“I’m not a  _ pansy! _ ” Palomo exclaimed, sitting up and glaring pointedly at Tucker.

“Oh look. He lives,” Tucker simply replied. 

“Beat it,” Grif said, jerking his head away from Palomo in indication that the other should move. Palomo scrambled out from behind the stack, and Grif gave it a hard shove, cramming it against the wall of the ship. “That way it only has one direction it can move in if we take a sharp turn,” he said, breathing hard from the effort.

“I just hope it doesn’t slide around. I don’t want to think about what Doctor Grey or Fox will do to us if any of this stuff comes back broken,” Simmons mused.

“Or Locus,” Tucker added.

“Don’t remind me!” Simmons exclaimed quickly.

Tucker just shook his head and brushed past. “Come on, Palomo. Let’s see if Bitters and Andersmith are done with those cables yet.”

“O-okay, wait up!” Palomo replied, hurrying after him.

Grif watched the two of them walk out of the Condor and waited until they were out of earshot to turn to Simmons. “How are you holding up?”

“Hm?” Simmons asked, jerking his head back slightly like he was surprised he’d been addressed.

“I just know that you’ve been having a tough time with some of the changes around here, is all,” Grif said with a shrug, leaning down and picking up the bungee cord. 

Simmons looked away. “Oh. Y-yeah. I mean...I guess I’ve been...getting used to it?”

“Mhm,” Grif replied, setting the bungee cord on top of one of the shorter stacks of equipment, then sitting down next to it. 

“What about you?”

Grif looked up, surprised. “Me?”

“Yeah. I mean, you weren’t too happy about Kimball’s decision to let Locus loose for good.”

Grif looked away and rubbed the back of his neck. That statement was true. But he also trusted Wash. And if  _ he _ thought that Kimball was making the right call, then there was no point in arguing. “Wash went through the most shit because of that guy,” he said slowly. “So if he thinks that letting him mix with the rest of us will work, then…”

“Forget Wash.”

Grif looked back at Simmons, surprised. “What?”

“I-I said  _ forget _ Wash,” Simmons repeated, seeming to realize the weight of his own words. “I wanna know how  _ you _ feel. We haven’t had time to  _ talk _ since two days ago.”

Grif stared at him for a moment, then sighed. “It’s like I said, if Wash thinks it’ll work, then it’ll probably work.”

Simmons’ shoulders sank slightly, and he walked over and took a seat on top of the stack across from Grif. “You...you know you can... _ talk _ to me...right?” he asked.

Grif tilted his head back, narrowing his eyes under his helmet. Of course he knew that. Hell, Simmons was one of the few people he’d always felt like he  _ could _ talk to. “Yeah, I know.”

“Okay...so…”

“So?”

Simmons looked away, hunching his shoulders slightly, and Grif had a creeping suspicion that there was something he wasn’t telling him. 

“Is there something you wanna--” Grif cut off when a loud clang followed by a voice that was obviously Carolina’s screeching “SON OF A  _ BITCH!”  _ echoed through the valley.

“Jesus!” Simmons exclaimed, leaping to his feet.

Grif stood and took a few slow steps towards the back of the Condor. “When was the last time we heard  _ her _ swear?” he muttered.

“Sh-should we go see what happened?”

Grif looked over to see Simmons standing beside him. “Probably. Doesn’t sound like anything good.” Then he started down the ramp. 

By the time he reached the bottom of it, he could see what had happened. The satellite had come loose, yanked up the tethers buried in the ground, and fallen a few feet before Bitters, Andersmith, Palomo, Caboose, and Tucker had managed to grab the cables to stop it. As they drew closer, Grif realized there was now a huge dent in the dish of the satellite. 

“Oh man...Grey is gonna  _ kill _ us,” Simmons whispered.

“It’s just a dent. The satellite will still work, right?” Grif asked.

“I mean, it  _ should _ \--”

“Grif! Simmons! Git yer asses over here and  _ help! _ ” Sarge barked from atop the tower.

“Grif, help me spot them on their way down,” Wash said, nodding at the two in the tower. 

“What about me?” Simmons asked.

“Help us, dumbass!” Tucker exclaimed, taking a step back to dig his heels deeper into the ground as he pulled on the cable..

Out of the corner of his eye, Grif saw Simmons look back at him and exclaim “b-but I’m not that strong!”

“Oh, quit yer blubberin’ Simmons! If it were heavy, those dirty blues wouldn’t be able to hold it!” Sarge barked.

“Yeah, okay,” Simmons sighed and walked over to where Tucker and Palomo were struggling to keep their cable from slipping.

Grif didn’t waste time watching the exchange. It wasn’t worth it to have to hear Wash blow out a lung yelling at him for not helping faster. He walked to the other Marine’s side and looked up at the tower. “Shouldn’t they come down after we get the satellite down?” he asked, watching as Carolina dismounted from the horizontal support she had been straddling and rose into a crouch, balancing with the help of her grav boots. 

“If what happened a few seconds ago happens again, they could both be brought down with the tower,” Wash replied simply. 

“My point exactly,” Grif said dryly. When Wash gave him a look, he just looked up at Sarge and shrugged.

“I’m coming down!” Carolina called down to them, drawing both Grif and Wash’s attention.

“Be careful!” Wash shouted back up.

“I’ll be fine,” Carolina replied, and started running down the side of the tower. She made it about two thirds of the way down before she jumped off, flipped mid-air, and landed perfectly on her feet behind Grif and Wash.

“Show-off,” Wash muttered, good-naturedly. 

“Shut up,” Carolina replied with an obvious smile in her voice.

Grif just shook his head and looked back up at Sarge, who was staring down at them. “Well?! Are you coming down?!” he called up.

“Quit yer yellin’! I’m workin’ on it!” Sarge yelled back. 

“We really should have tried to find some harnesses,” Carolina remarked, stepping up beside Wash with her hands on her hips. 

“You couldn’t have carried him down?” Grif asked her.

Carolina shook her head. “That tower doesn’t have enough solid surface area. I had trouble finding purchase with my grav boots on my own. I doubt I’d be able to take another person with me without slipping.”

“Great,” Grif huffed, looking back up and realizing, much to his dismay, that Sarge had started down the tower, using the supports like the rungs of a ladder. “Hey, be careful!”

“Quit fussin’, I’m fine!” Sarge said, looking back over his shoulder at Grif and almost slipping when his foot missed one of the supports. “See?” he exclaimed once he’d righted himself. “I’ve got it all under control!”

“Jesus, he’s gonna kill himself,” Wash muttered. 

Grif didn’t say anything, but instead watched Sarge’s descent with his jaw set and hands balled into fists.  _ He’s moving way too fast, _ he thought, noticing how the tower shook slightly with every movement Sarge made. He didn’t want to think about how possible it was that the structure could destabilize if Sarge made the wrong move. 

“Hey, um, Washingtub?”

Grif was pulled out of his thoughts when Caboose spoke up, drawing his and everyone else’s attention. 

“We’re a little busy Caboose. What is it?” Wash asked, sounding mildly impatient. 

“Yeah I was just wondering if maybe you could ask Sarge to maybe hurry up a little bit,” Caboose said.

“Cool yer jets! I’m goin’ as fast as I can!” Sarge barked.

“Dude, I told you to pee before we  _ left!” _ Tucker hissed, looking over at his teammate.

“What’s wrong Caboose?” Wash asked, turning to face him.

“Well it’s just that I don’t think I’m gonna be able to hold onto the rope a whole lot longer is all,” Caboose said, clearly ignoring Tucker’s comment. 

“He’s almost down, Caboose. Just a few more seconds,” Wash replied.

“No I mean--”

_ “Wash,” _ Carolina said, cutting Caboose off. She nodded up at the cable Caboose, Bitters, and Andersmith were holding onto. 

“Oh  _ shit!” _ Tucker exclaimed when he saw what she was looking at.

Grif followed her gaze and felt his heart drop. The cord had gotten caught against one of the rusted edges of the base of the satellite and started to fray. “Saaaarge,” he warned without looking up at the other man. 

“I told you, I’m hurryin’!”

“Boss?” Wash asked, looking to Carolina. 

Carolina didn’t say anything, but darted past him and leapt up into the air, grabbing onto the cable Simmons, Palomo, and Tucker were holding, and landing in front of the latter with it in her hands. “Sarge, you need to hur--” she cut off as the tower let out a metallic groan and started to lean towards her and the others ever so slightly.

_ Shitshitshitshit, _ Grif thought, tearing his eyes away and looking back up at Sarge, who still had a quarter of the way to go. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Wash look up nervously at the tower, then turn to Carolina and gesture at her to stop pulling. 

“There’s too much pressure,” he shouted. 

“We need this satellite intact!” Carolina shot back. 

“Maybe we should have picked up extra cables,” Palomo said, looking up nervously at where Caboose, Bitters, and Andersmith’s cord connected to the satellite.

“No fucking shit!” Tucker yelled, and took a step back. The second he did so, the cable Caboose, Bitters, and Andersmith were holding broke, snapping back and causing the three Marines to topple over backwards onto the ground. Carolina, Tucker, Simmons, and Palomo all scrambled back, struggling to keep the satellite from falling to the ground.

The tower let out another, longer groan, and a few loose rocks around its base shifted. Grif felt his heart drop into his toes when he saw Sarge lose his foothold. “Sarge!” he heard himself shout.

“Quit  _ fussin’!” _ Sarge grunted, managing to find his footing again.

“This thing is coming down!  _ Carolina!” _

Grif glanced over when he heard Wash speak, then looked back at Sarge, blood rushing in his ears. 

“Alright, let’s set this thing down  _ slowly, _ ” Carolina said. “Follow my lead.” She took a small step forward, and the others followed.

By now, Caboose, Bitters, and Andersmith were on their feet, and had found their way to where the satellite would land, looking up and waiting for it to reach them so they could guide it down. Grif watched them for a moment, then looked back up at Sarge, saw he was fine, then returned his gaze to Carolina and the others, just in time to watch Tucker trip. He stumbled forward into Simmons, who ran into Carolina, shoving the whole line forwards and causing Palomo to lose his grip. 

_ “Fuck!”  _ Palomo exclaimed, stumbling. 

“Oh  _ shit!” _ Bitters cried as he, Caboose, and Andersmith all leapt back.

The satellite dropped a good few feet before Carolina was able to sink her heels in, activate her grav boots, and give the cable a hard tug as she let out a savage yell. 

But the damage was done.

The tower, which Grif was willing to admit had been poorly put together and probably wasn’t meant to handle this sort of strain to begin with, had reached its capacity, and began to lean. Gritting his teeth, and turning away from Wash as he began to shrilly warn the others, Grif looked up at Sarge. The older Marine had stopped moving, and was simply holding on. “Sarge, you need to  _ move!” _

“I can’t while this damned thing is shakin’!” Sarge barked back, but there was a slight tremor to his voice now. 

“You don’t have a fucking  _ choice!” _

“Yer not exactly bein’  _ helpful!” _

“Sarge, just do what he says!” Simmons yelled from behind Carolina.

“You stay out of this!” Sarge snapped back, pointing at Simmons. 

_ Oh for fuck’s sake, _ Grif thought. Stealing a final look at Wash and the others, he pulled his gun off of his back, aimed, and shot the support right next to Sarge’s hand. With a yell, Sarge lost his grip and fell backwards. Grif tossed his gun aside and lunged forward, and was immediately flattened by a very belligerent red-armored Marine. 

“There! Was that so hard?!” Grif shouted, shoving Sarge off. 

“What in Sam hill was that for?! Ya coulda’ killed me, you sonuvabitch!” Sarge growled back, staggering to his feet.

“You were doing a pretty good fucking job of trying to do that yourself!” Grif exclaimed, standing and dusting himself off. 

“Yeah? Well I didn’t need--” Sarge cut off and whirled as the tower let out a screech.

Grif stared up at it, then looked over at the others, realizing the satellite was only a few feet away from reaching Caboose, Bitters, and Andersmith. It was still way too far. It would never make it to them and then be moved out of the way before the tower came down. Cursing, Grif darted around the structure to the side that was leaning and put his back against it, trying to keep it from tilting any farther. “If you assholes could  _ hurry, _ that would be  _ great!” _

“Move over!”

Grif turned to look right as Sarge gave him a nudge and braced against the tower next to him. “Sarge?! What the hell are you doing?!”

“What’s it look like?!”

Grif just shook his head and watched as the satellite reached Andersmith, Bitters, and Caboose, who helped gently lower it to the ground. Wash jumped down from the ledge that the tower was on and jogged over to help them, quickly detaching the remaining cable from it. The second he did so, the tower stopped moving. 

“Hurry up an’ get that thing outta here! We’ve got this!” Sarge yelled down to them. 

“Working on it!” Wash replied, signaling to the others. “Caboose, go up there and help them.”

“Okay!” Caboose replied.

Grif watched him climb up and brace himself against the structure besides Sarge. Then he turned his head to look on as Wash and the others began working on pushing and pulling the satellite away from the tower. They’d just managed to lift it off the ground when the tower let out another long, warning creak, followed by a loud metallic  _ clang _ as it began to uproot itself.

“Uh oh,” Caboose said.

“Oh  _ shiiiiiit!” _ Grif yelled.

“Agent Washington!” Andersmith exclaimed in warning.

And Wash snapped his head back to the tower to see what had happened, then turned back to the others, looked up at the satellite, then over to Carolina, before shouting  _ “SCATTER!” _

_ “Go!” _ Grif yelled, and dove out of the way as the tower began to topple. He looked back to see Sarge and Caboose on the other side of it, and watched as the structure began to collapse, leaning towards where his teammates had been just seconds ago, right towards the abandoned satellite. He saw Carolina take a step towards it, like she was going to try to move it somehow, only to pull back right as the tower’s base finally gave out and it fell over.

Grif scrambled away, shielding his visor with one arm, and tensed up when he heard the tower scrape against its rocky base and slam into the ground. He waited for the ringing in his ears to subside before he lowered his arm and looked back at the cloud of dust that had been kicked up by the tower. As it began to settle, he was able to make out the form of the satellite under the tower.  _ Wait a minute, _ he thought, leaning forward and narrowing his eyes. “Hey guys?!” he shouted, looking at where his teammates were standing on either side of the wreckage.

“Ho-ly  _ shit,”  _ Andersmith said.

“No fucking way,” Tucker breathed, shaking his head.

“Oh thank fucking  _ god!” _ Simmons exclaimed.

“Well that went better than it could have,” Carolina remarked, nodding at the completely untouched satellite that rested just a few feet under the fallen tower. By the look of it, the small amount of leverage that the stone base the tower sat on had caused the top of it to bury itself in the ground a few yards away from the satellite, missing it entirely. 

“We should hurry up and get that out from under there before this thing moves again,” Wash said, dusting himself off and starting towards the satellite, only to jump back when the tower shifted slightly.

Grif froze, then looked over at Caboose, who pulled his hand away from the tower base like he had just touched fire. “Tucker did it!”

“Shut up, Caboose,” Tucker huffed, glaring up at him. 

Carolina just sighed and looked at the mess, shaking her head. “Look, let’s just...get this satellite back to the others. I think we’ve had more than enough excitement for one day.”

Grif couldn’t agree with her more.

 

* * *

 

“So, is this as exciting as you’d hoped it would be, or no?” 

Locus looked up at where Fox was seated on top of the quantum computer, passing a cable down to Lopez for him to hook up to the generator in the corner of the lab. “I had no expectations,” he replied.

“Not even good ones?” Grey asked as she walked past behind him, a fire extinguisher tucked under each arm. 

Locus opted not to respond, and instead looked back at Fox, who was leaning over the side of the computer, looking down at Lopez.

“Hey hon, could you do me a favor and look at that monitor right behind you when you’re done plugging that in? I wanna make sure this thing’s ready to go.”

_ “Dame un segundo.”  _ Lopez finished hooking up the cable, then turned and looked at the monitor attached to the side of the computer tower.  _ “Listo.” _

“Alright, on that screen, it’s gonna have a bunch of information about the system check we just did.” Fox drew back from the edge of the top of the computer and rose up into a crouch, staring down into the open panel below her that exposed a portion of the system’s wiring. “Alright so, I think I can hear them, but just confirm for me that the fans are running. Are they?”

_ “Sí.” _

“And the bandwidth check came back within the necessary range?”

_ “Sí.” _

“Energy levels are nominal?”

_ “Sí.” _

“And are the system temperatures under twenty-seven degrees Celsius?”

_ “Sí, pero están aumentando.” _

“Ah,” Fox paused, looking back at Lopez. “What are they at right now, then?”

Locus, who had busied himself with putting all of the tools they had used to get the computer up and running away so Grey wouldn’t have a fit later and was really only half-listening to Fox and Lopez’s conversation, paused and looked in their direction. Was his mind playing tricks on him, or had Fox just  _ understood _ Lopez?

_ “Quice grados...Espera, ¿puedes entenderme?” _ Lopez asked, clearly just as surprised as he was. 

“Uh... _ ¿sí? _ ” Fox replied, shrugging at him. “I grew up around Spanish-speakers, so I know enough to understand it and hold a conversation. Though I’m admittedly pretty rusty.”

“Kind of like the end of this cable,” Jensen piped up from the other side of the lab. “Seriously, how  _ old _ is this thing?”

“Let me see,” Grey said, walking over and taking it from her, holding it up to her helmet for a better look. “It’s just a few specks of rust. Soak it in Coke and it’ll be good as new.”

“Good luck finding a drug dealer out here!” Donut crowed leaning out from behind the computer tower, his armor covered in dust.

“She’s not talking about the  _ drug, _ Donut,” Fox said, closing the panel and hopping off of the computer. “She’s talking about the drink.”

“You  _ could _ make a  _ lot _ of money from liquid cocaine, though,” Jensen said, digging back into the box she had pulled the first cable from. “Doctor Grey, are you  _ sure _ we have another one of these cables?”

“I always order double,” Grey replied as she walked over to the mini-fridge in the corner. “And the original recipe for Coca Cola  _ had _ cocaine in it.”

“What kind of cable is it?” Locus asked, looking over at Jensen. If it was that important, he might as well help.

“It’s an H-L-V-G-C-two-seventy-four-G-P-P,” Jensen replied. 

“Those are used for hard light,” he said, glancing at Fox.

“Someone knows their stuff,” Fox said with a hint of amusement in her voice. “And yeah, the system uses the same interface that was at the Station Alpha control hub back on Nalome.”

“Oh! I found one!” Jensen exclaimed, digging the cable out of the box in front of her and holding it over her head triumphantly. 

“Throw it to me!” Donut said, catching it when Jensen did so and leaning back behind the computer tower. 

“What else is there to do?” Locus asked, looking over at Fox.

She shook her head. “Not a whole lot. When Matthews and Volleyball come back, we should be able to run a full benchmark.”

“They should be almost done,” Grey said, walking past with a bottle of Coke in one hand and the rusted cable in the other. 

“You’re really gonna try to save that thing?” Fox asked.

“No use in not trying,” Grey replied, pulling a plastic bin off of a shelf and setting it on the workbench behind her. 

Locus watched as she poured the drink into the bin and stuck the rusted end of the cable into it, perking up when he heard the sound of footsteps coming from down the hall. Looking over, he realized Fox must have heard them too, because she was looking towards the entrance to the lab. 

“Ladies and gents, we’ve officially maximized the ventilation in this room!” McAllister declared as she stepped through the door with Matthews in tow. 

“Also the Reds and Blues are back with the satellite,” Matthews added, coming to a stop next to Jensen and offering a hand up from where she was crouched next to the box of cables she had been digging through. 

Fox tilted her head, then looked back sharply over her shoulder as the computer made a start-up sound and the hard light monitor flickered to life. “Looks like they made good time,” she said, turning back to Matthews. “Grey?”

The other woman already had a toolbox in her hand. “I’ll go up and help them get it set up,” she said as she walked past. “You make sure everything’s been setup correctly. Locus, stay and help her. The rest of you, follow me.”

“Sure thing!” Donut exclaimed, scrambling out from behind the computer and hurrying after her with Lopez right behind him.

Locus watched them leave the lab, then turned back to Fox, who was leaning over the computer’s keyboard, staring up at the hard light monitor. Having nothing better to do, he walked over to her, stopping beside her with his arms crossed. “Do you think this will work?” he asked after a moment.

Fox glanced over at him. “It should. I mean this thing ran basically all of the systems on Nalome.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Back to the drawing board?” Fox shrugged. “I don’t like putting all my eggs in one basket either, but this is one of those situations where we really don’t have a choice.” 

Locus had nothing to say to that, so he watched as Fox ran a full system check. “Has Kimball made a decision about sending you to Earth?” he asked.

“Nope. I figured that once we get this baby ready to go, and actually connect her to my people back home, she’ll be more inclined to make a decision.”

“Understood.”

“Jesus, you don’t have to sound so military about it,” Fox said with a laugh, then froze suddenly and put her hand to the side of her helmet.

Locus realized she was likely being contacted over comms. 

“Oh hell,” she muttered, dropping her hand to her side. 

“What’s wrong?”

“They dented the satellite.” Fox shook her head in disbelief. “Those poor knuckleheads. Grey’s probably giving them an earful right now.”

Locus felt himself tense up slightly. “Is that going to be a problem?”

“Nah, shouldn’t be,” Fox replied. “But I’m sure we’ll find out when we plug the thing in.”

Locus just sighed and stared back up at the monitor, wishing he could have the same carefree outlook that Fox did. 

“You’re worried, huh?”

Locus glanced over at Fox. “Our success is riding on that satellite.”

“Is that  _ all _ you’re worried about?”

He gave Fox a strange look. “What do you mean?”

“Ever since two days ago, you’ve been way, way quieter than you usually are,” she replied without looking at him.

Locus tilted his chin down slightly, thinking. Truth was, there had been an awful nagging in the back of his head that had been growing since the pirates’ capture. “Things are going to change drastically when you leave,” he said slowly.

Fox tilted her head up at him. “You’re worried about what’s gonna happen to you when I’m gone, aren’t you?”

_ I...suppose? _ Truth was, Locus had gotten used to having her around. And while she was certainly a helpful buffer between himself and the others, she was also one of the only people who really seemed to believe he wanted to help. With her gone, how was he going to convince Kimball and her men that he still wanted to make things right? It was hard to believe they’d listen to him. Chances were that without Fox around to help smooth out the creases, he’d wind up back at square one in no time. “It’s unlikely that I’ll be allowed the same level of freedom to assist Kimball and her men as I am now,” he replied.

“Hm,” Fox said, looking back at the monitor. “You’re probably right about that.”

And Locus knew that, but that didn’t mean that he wanted to hear her  _ say _ it. “I haven’t done enough,” he sighed, turning his head away and falling silent.

“So come with me.”

Under his helmet, Locus blinked, and he turned back to look at her. “You know General Kimball will never allow that.”

“It’s not like I’d be dropping it on her out of the blue. I mean,  _ you’re _ the one who told her I was thinking about it,” Fox said, giving him a meaningful look. “I can try talking to her, but if you want to stay here, then I won’t bother.”

“It’s up to you,” Locus replied simply.

Fox made a dissatisfied sound, but didn’t say anything else. Instead she looked up at the screen and watched as the system check came back with a report. “We are looking  _ good, _ ” she mused after reading it. 

“What now?” Locus asked.

“Now…” Fox leaned back and tapped the side of her helmet. “We could probably come up with a way to get into that ship’s systems.” She looked up at him. “How good are you at making rootkits?”

“Good enough.”

“Cool,” Fox said. “I’m going to get started on modifying the kill code I used on CORA. My laptop’s over on that workbench,” she nodded in the direction of it, “why don’t you get started on that?”

Locus nodded and walked over to retrieve her laptop. It wasn’t a particularly exciting task, but at least it would keep him busy until the Reds and Blues hooked up the satellite.

 

* * *

 

Setting up the satellite took the rest of the day. Not that this particularly  _ bothered _ Jensen. She liked having something to do with her hands. Hooking up the last of the cables with a sigh, she rose out of her crouch and looked out over the horizon. The sun gleamed like a bright orange beacon that cast its warm light across the canopy below.

Grey had requested that the satellite be placed atop the cliff directly above headquarters for the sake of getting the best signal out of it. A handful of Kimball’s men had already gotten the wiring figured out, which meant one less thing for them to worry about later. 

“There!” Jensen looked over when Grey spoke up and saw the older woman dusting her chestplate off. “Simmons, help me double-check this real fast, and if it looks good, then we’re done for the day.”

Jensen watched as Simmons pulled away from the base of the satellite to do her bidding, and quickly grew bored, returning her attention to the dying sun.

“Sure is pretty, huh?”

Jensen looked over when Andersmith walked over and came to a stop next to her. “You got grease all over your helmet,” she replied, a smile forming. 

“Do I?” Andersmith asked, sounding surprised.

“Yeah, you look like a dalmatian!” 

Andersmith let out a snort of laughter and looked away. He was silent for a moment, then asked, “hey, if it’s not too personal, are you and Palomo serious?”

Jensen blinked under her helmet. “Uh... _ whyyyy?” _

Andersmith shrugged. “I dunno. I was just wondering. You guys look good together is all.”

“Oh...thanks!”

“Don’t tell Palomo I said that, by the way. Or asked. Or...anything. He’ll make it weird.”

Now it was Jensen’s turn to laugh. “Yeah, I know. He gets so self-conscious. It’s funny...like in a kinda not really funny but funny way.”

Andersmith just nodded, then looked over when Bitters came to stand beside him. 

“Hey guys,” Bitters said, a yawn in his voice. “Watching the sunset?”

“Yup,” Jensen replied. “Is Doctor Grey almost done?”

Bitters just made a sound and shrugged vaguely. 

“Cool,” Andersmith said. 

“You guys think this thing’ll work?” Bitters asked.

“We put so much time into it. I hope so!” Jensen replied.

“The Reds and Blues and Doctor Grey all know what they’re doing,” Andersmith said simply.

“Oh- _ ho  _ don’t get me started,” Bitters said, an eye roll in his voice. 

“Doctor Grey at least knows,” Jensen offered.

“I’ll take that,” Bitters replied with a nod. 

“Alright, let’s pack it up. We’ll run a test on this thing tomorrow!” came Grey’s voice.

“Speak of the devil,” Andersmith said, looking back towards the satellite. 

“Alright, let’s go,” Bitters said, turning and following the Reds, Blues, and Kimball’s men as they started back down the trail, leaving both Andersmith and Jensen to catch up with him.

As she passed the satellite, Jensen slowed when she saw a trio of her fellow soldiers standing by it, not moving. “Louise, Hodges, Mel, you guys aren’t coming back with us?”

“We’re stuck guarding this thing,” Hodges replied, taking his hand off the foregrip of his gun and letting the weapon dangle by his side as he jerked a thumb back at the satellite. 

“First shift, baby!” Mel exclaimed. 

“At least  _ one _ of us is excited about it,” Louise groaned. 

“Aw, you’ll be fine!” Jensen said, smiling under her helmet at Louise’ tone. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the others getting too far away from her, so she gave the three a wave and said, “good luck you guys!” before hurrying to catch up. 

When they finally made it back to headquarters and got unsuited, most of the others dispersed to grab some dinner and rest. Jensen considered doing the same, but she also couldn’t kick the nagging curiosity about what Fox and Locus had managed to accomplish since she and the others had left them. So she bid her fellow lieutenants goodbye and hurried off down the hall towards Doctor Grey’s lab. It didn’t matter if she didn’t get dinner, anyways. She knew Fox had a stash of protein bars down there with her. 

Jensen made it to the elevator before she heard running footsteps behind her. Hitting the down button, she looked back over her shoulder towards the source of the noise and watched with surprise as Palomo rounded the corner and almost slid into the far wall. “Palomo?”

“HiiiIIOHGODWHOPUTTHATTHERE?!”

Jensen stifled a laugh as Palomo ran directly into the wet floor sign that was right in front of him, and apparently not as noticeable as its bright yellow surface would otherwise suggest. “Careful,” she snickered.

“It’s  _ fine,” _ Palomo said, standing the sign back up and stepping back away from it. “No one saw that.”

“I did.”

Palomo gave her a look, then shook it off and bounded over to join her, staring up at the screen above the elevator doors as it counted down. “So where ya heading?”

“Doctor Grey’s lab,” Jensen replied.

“Why? Don’t you want dinner?”

“I had a late lunch,” Jensen reasoned. “And I really wanna see what Fox has been up to since I had to leave.”

_ “Oh,” _ Palomo said, his shoulders sinking slightly. “Isn’t  _ Locus _ down there with her?”

“Yeah, but he doesn’t bother anyone,” Jensen said with a shrug, stepping into the elevator as it reached their floor and opened its doors with a chime. 

Palomo followed her. “Are you sure you’re not just biased because he saved you?”

“I don’t know,” Jensen admitted, hitting the button to the basement. “I don’t  _ think _ so?” She was quiet for a moment, then a small smile formed under her helmet. “If anyone should be biased, it’s  _ you _ , since he saved your _ girlfriend. _ ”

Palomo made a spluttering sound and looked away, crossing his arms. “Okay yeah so? I’m grateful for that, but I still don’t like him.”

Jensen shrugged. “I didn’t say you had to.”

Palomo didn’t say anything for a moment, then looked back at her. “Wait, you called yourself my girlfriend?”

“I mean...I  _ am _ , aren’t I?”

Palomo uncrossed his arms and rubbed the back of his neck, looking away. “I...guess? It’s just weird when you put it that way.”

Jensen blinked. “Why?”

Palomo shrugged and tilted his head away. “I  _ dunno _ ...you’re just really cool and smart and stuff... and then hearing you say it...I guess it just kinda feels like...luck?”

Jensen had to resist the urge to snort with laughter, because she genuinely couldn’t tell if he meant all of that. “You’re a total cheeseball,” she said, unable to keep the grin out of her voice.

Palomo looked over at her in surprise. “What? No I’m not!”

“Yeah you are!” Jensen exclaimed, hopping out of the elevator as it reached the basement floor. 

Palomo followed her “Nu-uh!”

“Yeah- _ huh!” _

“Am  _ not!” _

“Are  _ so- _ hey, wait a minute.” Jensen paused and looked towards the door at the end of the hall. “What is that?”

“It sounds like...eight-bit music, or something,” Palomo said, coming up and standing beside her. 

Jensen exchanged a look with him. “Huh…” She turned and stared at the door for a moment, then shrugged and said, “oh well. I guess we’re about to find out, right?”

The two made their way to the door at the end of the hall and stepped through it, both of them immediately looking for the source of the music.

“Well, hello, hello!” came Fox’s voice from next to the quantum computer. She was seated on the floor with a wireless keyboard in her lap. Next to her, Locus sat with his back to the computer tower, working on a laptop. 

Jensen and Palomo exchanged a look, and they both approached slowly.

“What... _ is _ that?” Jensen asked, staring up at what looked like some sort of  _ video game _ on the hard light monitor.

“Oh, that?” Fox asked, looking back at her. “Yeah, we got bored with doing like...real adult work stuff. So we put  _ Doom _ on the quantum computer.”

“It was surprisingly difficult,” Locus added, not looking up from the laptop.

“Yeah, we had to run a conversion on it after finally figuring out why we couldn’t get it to work,” Fox said, returning her gaze to the monitor. “Then again, the game  _ is _ over five-hundred years old. Though you’d think that the community would have built an updated version.”

“How long did that take you guys?” Palomo asked.

Fox exchanged a look with Locus, then replied “ehh….like a half-hour….-ish.”

“You wasted half an  _ hour _ on that!?” Palomo exclaimed.

“It’s just thirty minutes. We’re gonna be up all night  _ anyways,” _ Fox replied. “I plan on having this thing working by morning so we can benchmark it, and then come up with a P-O-A.”

“P-O-A?” Jensen asked.

“Plan of action,” Fox said. 

“Oh.”

“Anyways, shouldn’t you guys be winding down? You’ve both been working all day,” Fox said, hitting the escape button on the keyboard and pausing the game before looking back at them. 

“Oh, uh. I just wanted to see what you guys were doing, so I came down here,” Jensen admitted. “And Palomo followed me.”

“That he did,” Fox mused, tilting her head slightly. “But that’s not all you were looking for, is it?” she asked knowingly.

Jensen let her eyes wander to look at anything other than the other woman. “I...kinda wanted to help too?”

Looking back, she saw Fox exchange a silent look with Locus before saying, “go change into civvies, get something to eat, then grab a blanket, a pillow, and a travel mug and meet us back here in twenty.”

Jensen stared at her, then looked over at Palomo, then back at Fox. “Wait, you’re letting me help?”

“You now have nineteen minutes and forty-two seconds,” Fox replied.

“Come on Palomo,” Jensen said quickly and turned and hurried back out of the lab. 

“Are you  _ sure _ you wanna stay up and help?” Palomo asked when he caught up to her at the elevator, a hint of a whine in his voice.

“Uh  _ yeah _ I’m sure! This is so exciting! Plus it’ll look really good on my resume if I can say that I helped link up a quantum computer to a satellite,” Jensen replied, stepping into the elevator when the doors slid open.

“Your  _ resume? _ Are you applying for a  _ job?” _ Palomo asked, packing in next to her.

“No, but when this war ends, I’ve gotta be ready, y’know?”

Palomo held her gaze for a moment, then shook his head at the floor, a grin on his face. “You’re a nutcase, you know that?”

“Yeah,” Jensen said, punching the number for the living quarters, “but I’m  _ your _ nutcase.”

When the elevator arrived, it didn’t take either of the two very long to change into civvies and pack up backpacks full of water bottles, blankets, pillows, and some snacks before they hurried down to the mess hall to grab a quick meal. And with minutes to spare, the two made their way to the lab, dropping their bags on a workbench before returning to the computer.

The first thing Jensen noticed when she approached it was that the hard light monitor had some sort of interface on it with a loading bar smack dab in the middle of it. Behind it in another window was a command prompt that was running through lines of code. “What is that?” she asked, looking over at Fox, who was crouched next to Locus, looking at the laptop he had. 

“Satellite installation,” Fox said simply, not looking up.

“Oh,” Jensen said, tilting her head back at the monitor. By now the installation was nearly complete, judging by the loading bar. As she watched, it finished, and two new windows came up. “Um…”

Wordlessly, Fox hopped to her feet and walked over and typed a few lines into the command prompt before hitting buttons on the two windows, causing them to close. “Satellite installation complete. I’m gonna finish up some edits on the kill code so it doesn’t fry the system.”

“Did you ask Kimball about the Pelican?” Locus asked, not looking at her.

“Shoot. I’ll do that. It’s late though, so I’m not expecting a response,” Fox replied. She looked back at Palomo, who was fidgeting with a datapad. “Hey kid, you see that data chip on the table next to you?”

Palomo looked up, then over at the table, spotting the data chip. “Yeah?” he asked.

“Toss it to me.”

Jensen watched as Palomo picked up the data chip and threw it to Fox, who caught it one-handed while barely looking at it.  _ Huh, _ she thought. “Is that the kill code?” she asked.

“Yup.”

“And you’re just gonna plug it into that thing?” Jensen asked, nodding at the computer.

“It’s harmless if I don’t run it,” Fox replied, inserting the chip into a slot near the keyboard. When she did, a window popped up, which Fox immediately closed, then opened the file to edit it, revealing dozens of lines of code. She minimized the window and turned away, a hand to the side of her helmet. Jensen wondered if she was contacting Kimball.

The room was silent for a moment save for the sound of the computer’s fans, then Fox looked over at Locus and said, “she’s going to send a team out to retrieve the Pelican those pirates had. They’ll leave it in the hangar for us.”

Locus simply nodded.

“Okay, what’s the Pelican  _ for?” _ Palomo asked. 

“To test out the kill code,” Fox replied.  _ “The Staff of Charon _ is an early model Halberd-class vessel, so it happens to share a lot of software with Pelicans and Condors. If we can test out the kill code on a Pelican and have it work, then it  _ should _ be able to breach Hargrove’s ship as well.”

“Where do we come in with all of that?” Jensen asked.

“Well, when they bring in the Pelican, you guys are gonna relay what’s going on when the kill code runs,” Fox explained, scrolling through the code on the screen. 

“Can’t you just hook up a computer and see for yourself?” Palomo asked.

“Not unless I wanna fry it, no,” Fox replied. “That K-C will burn through just about anything that’s hooked up to it when it’s running. So the information has to be obtained manually. I know it’s kinda stone-age, but it’s the best we’ve got out here in the space boonies.”

“Fair enough,” Palomo said, hopping up onto the workbench and laying back with his head resting on his backpack for support. “Well, when you need me, just holler, I guess.”

Jensen watched him for a moment, then walked over and stood next to Fox, looking over her shoulder at what she was doing. “Is that C-plus-plus?”

“Yuuuup. You familiar with it?” Fox asked.

“Uh-huh,” Jensen replied.

“Cool. You can be my debugger,” Fox said simply. “And heck, I might even show you a thing or two about how to make one of these for yourself.”

Jensen blinked, startled. “Really?”

Fox looked back at her and nodded. “Oh, but before I forget, let me bounce the signal to Earth real quick and see if I can make contact.” She quickly opened the program installed for the satellite and began a signal test before grabbing the wireless keyboard and mouse and sitting down on the floor, patting the ground next to her for Jensen to sit.

Jensen plopped down cross-legged next to her, eyes upturned towards the monitor, watching as Fox pulled up the kill code. 

“Alright, now pay attention. This is how you ruin a jackass’ day.”

 

* * *

 

**[4:32 AM]**

 

Kimball stared at the time on the datapad on the floor next to her bed. She had been woken by the sound of an incoming video call that she very much did  _ not _ want to answer.  _ Duty calls _ , she thought tiredly, reaching down and grabbing the datapad and sitting up in bed. She answered the call, and was met with the sight of Fox’s face. 

“Fox,” Kimball groaned, trying to pick the sleep out of her right eye with a fingernail, “do you know what  _ time _ it is?”

“I know, I know, but it’s important, I promise,” Fox replied, waving a hand.

“Hi General Kimball!” 

Kimball watched as the video dipped to the left, showing Jensen’s face for a moment before it focused back on Fox. “You convinced one of my lieutenants to pull an all-nighter with you,” she said flatly.

“I didn’t convince her to do anything,” Fox said. “And Palomo’s down here too…” she looked back over her shoulder, “....and he has already resumed his nap. Excellent.”

“What do you need?” Kimball asked, growing impatient.

“Well, I just wanted to let you know that I was able to successfully ping Earth. Reached out to  _ two _ of my contacts. Couldn’t get the third, but oh well. So you’re free to talk to them whenever you want,” Fox said.

Kimball blinked and straightened up a bit. “When are they available?”

“Later today, probably,” Fox replied. “I sent a video message through to both of them basically explaining what happened and what my current situation is. I also told them to expect a call from you.”

“And they haven’t gotten back to you?”

“They’re both sleeping. Hopefully. It’s like twelve over there, or something.”

“Alright,” Kimball said, yawning into her hand. “Anything else?”

“We completed the test with the enemy Pelican with minimal issues that have already been resolved. So we’re good to go with  _ The Staff of Charon.” _

Kimball blinked. “That’s perfect.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna send the lieutenants to bed and then run another benchmark on this thing before grabbing some shut-eye myself,” Fox said. “Meet me around seven-thirty?”

“Sounds good,” Kimball nodded.

“Cool, I’ll let you get some sleep then. Just giving you an update,  _ adios! _ ” Fox said, giving a casual salute before signing off. 

Kimball stared at the datapad screen for a moment, the wheels in her head turning, and a newfound mixture of excitement and worry fluttering in her chest. Then she connected the datapad to its charger and set it on the floor before laying back and staring at the ceiling of her quarters. 

Morning couldn’t come soon enough.

 

* * *

 

“Good morning.”

Kimball looked up when a travel mug full of coffee was set down on her desk. “Thank you, Carolina,” she said, nodding at the other woman as she picked up the mug and took a sip.

“You weren’t at breakfast,” Carolina said, and Kimball could sense the unspoken  _ “is something wrong?” _ in her voice.

“Fox was able to reach Earth last night. She also ran a test of the kill code on the enemy Pelican that was retrieved yesterday evening as well,” Kimball replied, setting the mug back down.

Carolina leaned back slightly, frowning. “I take it you’re going to reach out to her contacts then?”

“That was the plan,” Kimball said, looking away and staring at the wall. 

Carolina nodded, saying nothing for a moment. “What have you decided in regards to sending her to Earth?”

“I don’t know,” Kimball replied, looking back at her.

Carolina met her gaze with thinly veiled surprise. “Is there another plan?”

Kimball shook her head and sighed, falling silent for a while. When she finally spoke again, her voice was low and hinted at frustration. “I don’t really think that any  _ plan _ I could come up with will matter. I know she’s going to wind up having to go to Earth, and I know that she’s going to try to take Locus with her. The problem is, we’re so close to that happening, and I still don’t know how any of it will  _ work.” _

Carolina looked away, chewing her bottom lip. “Maybe talking to Fox’s contacts will help clear it up,” she suggested.

Kimball closed her eyes. “I hope so.” She took another sip of her coffee, glancing over at the monitor on her desk. She was supposed to be meeting Fox in ten minutes. “I guess we’ll see,” she said, standing and tucking her datapad under one arm and picking her coffee up in her free hand. “Walk with me?” she asked, looking at Carolina.

“Sure,” Carolina said, turning and letting her lead the way out of her office.

They made it about halfway to the lab before Carolina had to meet up with her patrol, leaving Kimball to walk the rest of the way there in anxious silence. When she stepped off the elevator and made her way down the hall to the lab, that anxiety formed a ball in her chest that grew tighter and tighter with every step until she walked through the door. 

Looking around, she noticed that neither Jensen nor Palomo where anywhere in sight. Fox must have sent them to their quarters. Frowning, she walked over towards where the computer had been set up, scuffing to a stop when she caught sight of Locus perched on top of the computer looking a laptop in his lap. For a moment, neither of them moved, and Kimball wondered if he was even awake.

“Fox will be down in five minutes,” Locus said suddenly, causing Kimball to flinch. He looked over at her calmly, and Kimball felt the heat rise into her face.

“I see,” Kimball said, straightening her back to try to regain some semblance of composure. She was silent for a moment, looking around at the lab, then said, “what are you working on?”

Locus tilted his head slightly at her. “Debugging.”

“A little difficult to do without a rubber duck!” exclaimed a new voice.

Kimball looked back to see Grey walk through the doors with her own mug of coffee in her hand. “Good morning Doctor Grey.”

“Morning Kimball,” Grey chimed on her way past, stopping and doing a double-take when she saw Locus. “What are you, a canary?”

“Define the parameters,” Locus said flatly, and Kimball could have  _ sworn _ he sounded sarcastic.

“Hmph,” Grey said taking a sip of her coffee without looking away from him. “When did Fox say she’d be back down?”

“Three minutes.”

“How long ago did she tell you that?”

“Two minutes ago.”

“Ah,” Grey sighed, looking mildly annoyed. “If she hadn’t pulled an all-nighter, she could have been up early like the rest of us.”

“We wouldn’t be here this early if she  _ hadn’t,” _ Locus replied.

Kimball stared at him, surprised both by how much of a conversation Grey was managing to get out of him,  _ and _ the fact that he was  _ defending _ Fox.

“Fair enough. But she really should have preserved her brain cells. You lose a ton of them when you miss out on sleep,” Grey mused, looking pointedly at Kimball. 

Kimball just gave her a look.

“Goooood morning New York Cityyyyyyy!”

Kimball turned and looked over as Fox walked through the lab door with her arms spread wide in greeting. “Oh man I got like two hours of sleep and I feel  _ great!” _ she exclaimed, making her way over to Kimball and Grey with a bounce in her step. “Which means I’ve hit my second wind, and I’m also probably dying.”

“Just your brain cells, sweetie,” Grey replied.

“Eh, I’ve got plenty,” Fox said, waving a hand dismissively at her and looking up at Locus. “Jesus, you’re like a big cat sitting on the warm spot on the computer,” she snickered. “You get any sleep?”

“Some,” he replied.

“Cool.” Fox looked back at Kimball and Grey with her hands on her hips. “Soooo I’m gonna go ahead and start this baby up, you ladies sit tight!” She pointed finger guns at the two of them before striding over to the computer and powering it on. 

As she did so, Locus rose into a crouch, then hopped off of the tower, landing smoothly on his feet and leaning up against the computer with his arms crossed.

Kimball pulled her eyes away from him and looked up as the hard light monitor flickered to life above the computer and showed the start-up sequence. Once it completed, Fox pulled up a window that showed a benchmark report for the system.

“I ran this before I headed out earlier this morning. Just to test the system to triple-check that it was in good condition for what we’ll be using it for. Obviously the report came back with good news, so we have nothing to worry about,” Fox explained.

“What about the system temperature?” Kimball asked, nodding at the screen. “It’s reading as high.”

“Yeah, so that was expected, actually. The benchmark is basically a stress test to see how much this thing can handle before it crashes,” Fox said, patting the side of the computer. “The reason I’m not worried about it is because there isn’t any sort of crash report logged here. And the benchmark I ran actually put  _ more _ stress on this thing than Hargrove’s ship should. So if it didn’t crash under that pressure, with  _ those _ temperatures, it  _ should _ be fine.”

Kimball narrowed her eyes slightly and looked over at Grey, who just nodded. 

“There’s something we need to talk about before we get too far into this,” Fox said, looking away from the monitor and back towards Kimball.

Kimball blinked and stared at her. “What is it?”

“Now that this thing’s up and running, you can obviously talk to my contacts and work some stuff out,” Fox explained, putting her weight into the hand she had resting next to the keyboard. "I know I brought up the possibility of me going to Earth before. When we access  _ The Staff of Charon _ and mess with its systems, we’ll create a safe passage from here right to the Sol System.”

_ So that’s where this is going, _ Kimball thought, taking a sip of her coffee. “I see,” she said. “And how long will that last for?”

“I’m not sure,” Fox admitted. “It all depends on how fast the damage is repaired.”

Kimball stared at her a moment, then turned her gaze to the computer’s monitor, eyes scanning absently over the benchmark report. Fox had connections. Fox had money. Fox had power. And she had access to the U.N.S.C.’s database. Kimball had a feeling deep in the pit of her stomach that all of this would match up once she reached those contacts Fox had mentioned. And she also had a feeling that the charisma Fox displayed would allow her to quickly build a team in to move against Charon Industries. All good things. All things that would help.

But Fox was also the only person that really knew anything helpful about Charon. And she had proven to be capable of dealing massive amounts of damage that would greatly benefit them in the inevitable event of another pirate attack. And she was the only one that Locus showed any sliver of trust towards. Not to mention that if she was sent to Earth, she’d want to take him with her. 

With a sigh, Kimball looked to Grey for help. “What do you think?” she asked.

“About her going to Earth?” Grey asked. “I think it’s a no-brainer after what she told us a few weeks ago.”

Kimball glanced over at Locus, who tilted his head at her, but said nothing. “You said you were going to go after Hargrove’s friends?” she asked, looking at Fox. 

“Yep. And convince them not to help him during the investigation and trial,” Fox replied.

“And what else?”

“Probably sabotage a bunch of Charon’s shit too. Weapons shipments and stuff. They actually do a lot of business in the Sol System.”

Kimball stared into her coffee, thinking hard. “And how are you going to avoid getting arrested for that? You can’t link that back to us. We’ve had a hard enough time getting the U.N.S.C.’s attention as it is. If they find out that someone is committing corporate sabotage in our name, things will only get harder for us here.”

“So I’ll ping my buddy, General Sachs, and have him run up the pipeline and get us operational approval. If we’re working for the U.N.S.C., it’ll be harder for Hargrove to come after us, because he’ll have a hail of bullets from every other Marine in the Sol System aimed at him if he does. And the U.N.S.C. won’t be able to persecute us for doing anything unlawful, because they’ll have authorized it to begin with,” Fox explained.

“Doing that could minimize the flexibility of your operations,” Locus said, finally speaking up.

Fox looked over at him. “True, and that’ll suck, but it’s the only way me being able to access the U.N.S.C.’s database makes sense. If I’m an outsider, and I’m able to get past that protocol, then  _ Pepper _ is going to be in some deep shit, and then all of us will lose our access if the U.N.S.C. finds out that I’m leaking data to a group of rough and tumble Marines.”

Grey let out an irritated sigh. “And that’s the web we’re tangled in now, I suppose.”

Fox shrugged at her. “It’s less of a ‘we’ thing and more of a ‘me’ thing. I picked my poison. Now I gotta drink it.”

“How would the U.N.S.C. find out that their database is being...leaked...to you?” Kimball asked, still trying to make sense of it all. 

“Okay, so Fox is Annie Rosenblum, who works for Charon, right? Hargrove knows that. And when he sees that all his friends are turning against him and all his shit is getting wrecked, he’s going to look into Annie’s life and try to find a connection that could lead to her figuring out how the hell she knows where to hit. And he’s going to find out that she studied under Doctor Howard Manning alongside Pepper Matsukaze. And he’s going to realize, ‘hey, oh shit, they’re probably friends now. Pepper is doing illegal bad shit that’s allowing Fox-slash-Annie to do illegal bad shit to me.’ And then he’s going to come after  _ both _ of me. And somewhere along the way, he’s probably going to find out that we’re all the same person. And  _ then _ the media and the U.N.S.C.’s attention won’t be on him anymore, and he’ll be able to get away with shit again, because I’ll be stuck behind bars unable to do anything,” Fox replied.

Kimball blinked at her, then glanced at her coffee, greatly wishing she had spiked it with some of the whiskey Carolina had brought her. “So you’re saying...this  _ whole _ thing could fall apart...if you do one tiny thing wrong?” she asked incredulously.

“Well,  _ yeah? _ But if we get approved by the U.N.S.C., then Pepper feeding Annie information won’t be a problem, because she’ll be legally obligated to do so in order to assist in a U.N.S.C.-sanctioned investigation,” Fox explained, scratching the side of her helmet. “My point is, even though getting approved by the U.N.S.C. will, like Locus stated, screw our ability to be flexible in our operations on Earth, it’s pretty much necessary in order for all of us to come away from this with clean hands...Er...well,  _ most _ of us, anyways.”

Kimball pinched the bridge of her nose, squeezing her eyes shut. She couldn’t tell if the headache forming in her temples was from stress, or the fact that she’d been clenching her jaw. “How soon can I reach out to your contacts?” she asked, stress seeping into her voice.

“As soon as I hear back from them,” Fox replied. 

_ That’s not an answer,  _ Kimball thought, but held her tongue. “Is that all you have for me right now?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Fox replied.

Kimball sighed, “I want to know the minute they get back to you, understand?”

Fox gave her a snappy salute, piping out a hearty “sure thing!” before turning back to the computer.

Kimball turned, leaned in towards Grey. “Make sure she reaches me the second they contact her.”

Grey just gave her an amused smile. “Of course,” she said, taking a sip of her coffee.

Kimball just nodded and started towards the door. She had a list of questions to prepare for those contacts. 

 

* * *

 

It had only been a few days since the last fight with the space pirates, and things had already gone back to normal. It had been surprising to Sarge how quickly the clamour about the satellite and Locus’ assimilation had died down. Not that he was complaining. It was actually kind of nice to see everyone able to relax somewhat. Well,  _ almost _ everyone. From what little Sarge had seen of Kimball, the woman was stressed, but that was nothing new. And he didn’t imagine that there was anything to be done about that either on his end. 

Wash, however, seemed to have picked up on that slight bit of tension that still floated in the air, and had decided to redirect it by means of resuming the lieutenants’ training regimine. Better to keep them prepared in case something happened. 

Sarge watched as Andersmith disarmed Bitters and went in with an elbow jab as a follow-up on the sparring mat, the corner of his mouth twitching into a smile as Bitters dodged to the side. Behind them, Jensen and McAllister, and Palomo and Matthews were paired off as well. 

It was interesting to see how far they had all come from when they had first begun training with the Reds and Blues. And ever since the fight with the mercs to stop The Purge, the lieutenants had been working harder than before to be effective leaders for their fellow men. Seeing them push themselves put a spark of pride in Sarge’s chest.

It was almost nostalgic, seeing them go through similar drills to what he endured in Basic. The difference was that the odds were stacked against them, and they knew it. That, and they were doing way better than he did when he was still green. Of course, he’d never admit it. 

Sarge was pulled out of his head when Wash called for training to be over for the day and dismissed everyone. “Good work, men!” he barked out in addition.

“Except you, Palomo!” Tucker added, but sounded somewhat good-natured.

“Aw I thought he did okay,” Caboose said.

Tucker just shook his head.

Two by two, he lieutenants ended their sparring matches and dusted themselves off and shook hands. Sarge caught sight of Matthews giving Andersmith a pat on the shoulder before the two of them and the others headed for the locker rooms. Well, most of the others. Palomo was lagging behind for some reason, looking hesitant.

“Come on Palomo!” Jensen called back to him.

“In a minute!” Palomo replied over his shoulder before looking back towards Wash.

“Is there something you need, lieutenant?” Wash asked.

“Oh, uh, actually I was hoping to talk to Sarge,” Palomo replied quickly. 

“Oh,” Wash said, and Sarge saw him looking his way out of the corner of his eye. 

“What d’ya need, son?” Sarge asked, and heard Tucker say, “hey, catch up to us later, Sarge. We’re out.”

Palomo held his tongue and looked off at the others, and Sarge found himself doing the same, eyes on the backs of Wash, Tucker, and...well Caboose was walking backwards, but  _ still. _

“Bye Sarge!” Caboose exclaimed, waving with both hands before he turned around and faced forward, just in time to run into the wall. 

Sarge snickered to himself, watching as Caboose recovered and stepped through the doorway, then he turned back to Palomo, who, to his surprise, had approached him. “Well?”

Palomo looked away, seeming uncomfortable, and muttered something under his breath.

“Speak up!”

Palomo jumped, then straightened out and spoke up. “Look, uh, I never got to apologize for fucking up your plan the other day. Or, well, I had time to, but I kept getting side-tracked, and--” Palomo shook his head. “Point is, it was my fault, and I’m sorry.”

Sarge stared at him. For a moment, it sounded like the kid was talking nonsense, but then he remembered the Mantis. “Son, don’t you worry yerself none. It’s water under the bridge.”

“But-!” Palomo cut off, then in a quieter voice said, “but you seemed mad about it.”

_ Ah. _ Truth was, he  _ had _ been disappointed, but not at Palomo. The disappointment was towards himself for coming up with a plan that had put his team in unnecessary danger.  _ Sure _ , Grif was a fat, lazy pain in the ass, but Sarge didn’t want to see him  _ or _ Simmons hurt because of something he thought up. “I wasn’t mad at you,” Sarge said. “So quit yer worryin’, y’hear?”

“A-are you sure?”

“ _ Yes _ I’m sure! If I was mad at you, I’d’ve yapped at ya for it!”

Palomo looked down towards the floor. “Okay...Still, I’ll try to be a better shot next time.”

And Sarge felt something stab at his heart a little from the way Palomo said it. The kid was being too hard on himself. Under his helmet, his brow furrowed, and he narrowed his eyes in thought. Then, he let out a sigh, put a hand on Palomo’s shoulder and said, “kid, you’re a  _ great _ shot. So quit doubtin’ yerself. I’ve met Marines twice yer  _ age _ who couldn’t fire a gun as straight as you.”

Palomo looked up at him, and his shoulders began to sag a little less. 

“So quit beatin’ yerself up about somethin’ that had nothin’ to do with what you did, got it?”

“Y-yeah...I guess,” Palomo replied, sounding more surprised than doubtful. “Thanks, Sarge.”

Satisfied, Sarge gave him a nod and pulled his hand away. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I gotta go find where those Blues were headin’, and beat em there!” And with that, he turned and headed for the exit, a smile under his helmet. That kid was going to be fine.

Sarge made it about halfway down the hall before he nearly ran into Kimball as she turned a corner to head in the same direction as him. “‘Afternoon General!” he greeted.

“Ah, sorry Sarge. I didn’t see you,” Kimball replied, looking and sounding like her mind was only half in the conversation.

“Eh, yer fine,” Sarge said. “Yer not the worst thing I could’ve run into.”

“I suppose not,” Kimball said absently, starting down the hall.

Sarge matched her pace. “If ya don’t mind me askin’, where’re you off to in such a rush? Is somethin’ wrong? It ain’t those dirty space pirates, is it?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” Kimball said. “I’m actually glad you asked, because you can probably share this with the others. Do you remember the contacts that Fox mentioned she had on Earth a while ago?”

“How could I forget! She plans on usin’ em to give that old chairman a what-for, right?”

“Right,” Kimball replied. “Well, she got in contact with them, and they just got back to her, and apparently they’re ready for me to talk to them now.”

Sarge narrowed his eyes. “But don’t you gotta use that fancy computer Fox brought from the moon? The lab’s in the other direction!”

“I have something I need to pick up from my office before I head down there.”

“Huh,” Sarge said. “So you want me to tell the others that yer goin’ to talk to Fox’s friends, and you won’t be around?”

“That, and to expect a meeting to discuss what happens next, if you don’t mind,” Kimball said, sounding a little relieved.

“Sure thing!”

“Excellent,” Kimball said, slowing to a stop in front of the hallway that led to her office. She gave Sarge a nod and said, “I don’t know how long this will take, but I appreciate your help. I’ll let all of you know how things went by the end of the day.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Sarge said, stopping next to her. “Best of luck to ya! Now if you’ll excuse me, I gotta go hunt down the rest of my team.” With that, he turned and started off down the hall again. Grif, Simmons, and Lopez were probably down in the motorpool. Donut and Doc were likely having wine and cheese hour together. And the Blues were probably goofing off somewhere.  _ No sense in runnin’ around tryin’ to find all of em’, _ Sarge thought, putting a hand to the side of his helmet and hopping onto their private channel. “Hey you all, drop what yer doin’ and meet me in the motorpool stat. I’ve got some news for all of you.”

 

* * *

 

When she reached her office, Kimball hurriedly grabbed the datapad off of her desk, nearly spilling the mug of now room-temperature coffee that sat next to it. Tucking the datapad under her arm, she made her way back down to the lab.

Thankfully the elevator was empty when she got to it, and when the doors finally closed after she’d stepped inside, she took a moment to decompress, letting out a long sigh and leaning back against the far wall. Why did this whole thing have to be so stressful? She stared up at the screen above the elevator doors as it counted down to the sub-level, straightening up and taking a deep breath a few seconds before it arrived at her destination. When the doors slid open again, she stepped out with her shoulders back and her head held high; a trick her mother had taught her when she was young and self-conscious. 

“If you pretend to be confident, eventually you’ll start believing you are,” she always used to say.

Kimball still wasn’t sure if that was entirely true or not, but it certainly helped her feel like she at least  _ looked _ confident now. And considering what she was about to be dealing with, that was the best she could do.

She stepped into the lab and headed straight for where Fox was sitting on the floor in front of the computer, looking around to see who else was in the room with them. When she reached Fox, she asked, “where’s Locus?”

“Not sure,” Fox replied, standing, and Kimball realized she had a wireless keyboard in her hand. “So you’re going to be speaking to General Sachs and Captain Rubio Sanchez. Sachs looks like a stereotypical Texan, and Sanchez has a scar on his chin and a Spanish accent,” she explained as she walked over and reattached the keyboard to its port on the computer. “They’re friends, so they agreed to meet up to video call you so you wouldn’t have to say the same thing twice to two different people.”

“Okay,” Kimball said slowly, watching as Fox pulled up a window on the screen.

“I’ve got the connection ready to go,” Fox said, stepping back. “Just hit the video call button, and give it a minute, and it should go through.”

“Understood,” Kimball replied, taking her place in front of the keyboard.

“So...do you want me here for this? Or…” Fox asked from behind her.

Kimball glanced back at her. “I would prefer to speak to your contacts in private,” she said. Better to not have Fox around to avoid twisting the results.

Fox nodded once. “Cool. I figured as much.” She turned to leave, then said, “if the connection goes out or stops working, just give me a holler. I won’t go far.”

“Thank you,” Kimball said, watching as she walked out of the lab and turned the corner. She listened until Fox’s footsteps subsided, then she turned her attention back to the monitor.  _ Here goes nothing, _ she thought, taking a deep breath and clicking on the call button. 

The window immediately resized to fit the entire screen, and went black with a circular loading icon in the middle of it. Kimball waited impatiently as the connection loaded, her apprehension only growing with each passing second. Then there was a sound from the computer’s speakers, and suddenly a face appeared on the screen.

“Well, hello there-- shoot, hang on just a mo’, the lighting in here is horrible.” Judging by the accent, Kimball guessed that the speaker was Sachs, and waited as he looked towards someone offscreen. “Ruby, could you--” he cut off as the lighting suddenly got brighter in the room. “Perfect, thank you. Sorry about that,” the man said, looking back towards Kimball. In the better lighting, she could make out a man much older than her with silver hair sitting at a table. 

“General Kimball, I presume?” he asked in greeting, the crows feet in the corner of his eyes scrunching up as he smiled.

“Hello,” Kimball replied, realizing with surprise that this was the first time she had found herself conversing with someone with the same rank as her since Doyle died. 

“Pleased to meet you. Name’s Jason Sachs,” Sachs said, glancing over as another man, who looked about the same age as him, sat down next to him. “And this here is Rubio Sanchez.”

Sanchez gave her a grim smile and a nod. “Hello.”

“You seem like a busy woman, being a general and all, so I won’t waste your time,” Sachs continued. “Pepper filled us in on what’s been going on, and we’ve both started looking into resources that we can use to help you folks out.”

“What sort of resources?” Kimball asked.

“Weapons and vehicles, mostly,” Sanchez replied. 

“Fox told me that you could possibly get her and her operations approved by the U.N.S.C.” Kimball said.

Sachs, whose eyes had been on Sanchez, looked back at her. “Well...I could pull some strings, but I’d need to know what I’m going for first. Fox said there weren’t really any definites, but that she wanted to try to build a sort of task force to aid the investigation of that chairman.”

Kimball’s eyes drifted away from the screen in thought. Sending Fox down there and having her set up a team and complete missions on her behalf entailed a  _ lot _ of responsibility. Not that Kimball had any doubts about her leadership skills. Fox had repeatedly shown the confidence necessary to handle herself in tight situations, and even managed to command the respect of  _ Locus. _ So it didn’t seem particularly  _ likely _ that she would be an ineffective leader. What really worried Kimball was the unknown. She didn’t like not being able to be hands-on with the fate of her people. And she wasn’t sure if Fox’s leadership would be reflective of her own desire to bring Hargrove to justice.  _ These two know her better than I do. They’d probably be a better judgment of her character than I am, _ Kimball thought, looking back at the monitor.

“Fox and I discussed sending her to Earth, and she  _ did _ mention that she would set up a team once she arrived,” Kimball said. “My only concern is whether or not she’ll be able to lead in a way that reflects well on the people of Chorus.”

“Well, does she  _ seem _ like a loose cannon?” Sanchez asked, propping his chin up with a hand. 

“No,” Kimball replied slowly. “But her way of approaching certain situations hasn’t always aligned with our best interests.”

“With all due respect General Kimball,” Sachs began, “you’re not exactly in a place where you can be picky about this sort of thing. You--” He cut off when Sanchez raised a hand to stop him.

“Pepper has always had a more... _ creative _ outlook on problem-solving,” Sanchez said, folding his arms on the table and leaning forward slightly. “And I’ll agree that it can sometimes be unorthodox. But Sachs and I plan on maintaining continuous contact with her if she comes to Earth. And, knowing her, she’ll likely come to us for advice on how to handle problems that are much bigger than her.” He leaned back again and shook his head slightly. “She’s been through a lot, and I know she probably seems a little...eccentric. But she knows what she’s doing and what she  _ needs _ to do, and judging by the message she sent the two of us, she really  _ does _ have your best interests in mind.”

Kimball took a deep breath, processing this. “Very well,” she said after a moment, looking back up at the two men. “So say I decide to send her down to Earth. What happens then?”

“Well, the U.N.S.C. is  _ already _ looking at the idea of a task force to aid their investigation, so there will be little fuss getting her involved with that,” Sachs replied. “But here’s the big ugly fish; you have to claim her before I can do any of that.”

Kimball tilted her head to the side. “Meaning?”

“Meaning you basically have to appoint Fox to whatever position you want her in, preferably a higher rank, like lieutenant colonel, and then send those creds to me to get them confirmed,” Sachs explained. “She was a corpsman during the war. The U.N.S.C. won’t even  _ look _ at her to lead a team unless she has some other cred besides that.”

Kimball sucked in a breath. “The U.N.S.C. hasn’t been particularly  _ helpful _ these past few years. What makes you think that they’ll approve anything that I send their way?”

An almost mischievous grin spread across Sachs’ face, and he said, “because they owe you a couple of damned favors, and they know it, and we can milk that to get what we need out of them.” 

Kimball thought about this for a moment, then asked, “and how long will that take?”

“If you can get her new credentials to me within the next few days, I’ve got friends in high places who can get you results in about a week or so,” Sachs replied. “You’re going to need to get in contact with those friends of mine to help ease the process though. So they know that you’re the real deal.”

“Just so I’m following this correctly; I need to appoint Fox to a commanding position, register her as a soldier under my command, send her credentials to you, and talk with the higher-ups in the U.N.S.C. and convince them to approve her?” Kimball asked, feeling stressed out already.

“It’s a lot, I know, but it’s what needs to be done,” Sachs replied with a nod.

Kimball sighed. “Okay. I can work with that.” She fell silent for a moment, then remembered one of the questions she had prepared. “What can you tell me about Fox’s connections to Emblem and that AI?”

Sachs and Sanchez exchanged a look, then Sanchez said “well, the company was started by her father and his friend Leroy Carson. Pepper grew up with the AI while it was in its earlier stages and became familiar with the way it works. She eventually turned her focus towards biomechanical engineering after I lost my leg in the war. Then she lost her family, and since she’s the only one who knows the extensive details of how the AI works, the U.N.S.C. basically told her and Carson that she has no choice but to take his place for security purposes. They allowed her to leave Earth to further her studies, but she’s been required to check in with Sachs, again for security purposes. Once she comes back, she’ll be taking over the company.”

Kimball blinked under her helmet, surprised. The way Fox had described the company, it hadn’t  _ sounded _ like a ball and chain.  _ Strange, _ she thought. “And the AI gives her access to the U.N.S.C. database like she said?”

“Mhm,” Sachs replied with a nod.

Kimball turned her gaze to the floor, thinking. So far, everything she’d learned from these two added up with what Fox had told her. And she’d certainly learned a great deal more about how things needed to move forward than she had expected to. But there was one thing that still gnawed at the back of her head. She looked back at the men on the screen and asked “did Fox tell you anything about someone named Locus?”

And like that, both men fell silent. Sachs turned his head slightly with an unreadable expression on his face, and the corner of Sanchez’s lips twitched upwards slightly.  _ “That _ bundle of sunshine?” he asked, and Kimball suddenly understood the nickname Fox had given Locus.

“Fox told you about him?”

“She sure did, and  _ whoo-ee _ is  _ he _ a piece of work! ” Sachs replied, looking back towards her. “Why she got herself involved with him is beyond me, but it’s like Ruby said, Pepper was always a little strange.”

“Fox wants to bring him with her to Earth,” Kimball said quickly, before they got too off-topic.

Neither of the men looked surprised. “She told us,” Sanchez said. “And while I disagree with her, she seems to believe that he’ll be of use to her somehow.”

“He certainly has the skills she’d need from someone to help her with any dirty work that needs to be done,” Sachs mused.

Kimball nodded silently, thinking. They hadn’t decided on anything regarding him, so it wouldn’t hurt to throw out a hypothetical. “How would you two handle it if he  _ was _ sent to Earth with her?”

“Judging by what she told us, she wouldn’t  _ need _ us to do any sort of ‘handling,” Sachs replied.

“Though I will certainly make it clear that any misconduct is  _ highly _ inadvisable,” Sanchez added with a nod. 

“And would you be able to enforce that?” Kimball asked.

Sachs and Sanchez exchanged an amused look with one another before the latter replied “absolutely.”

“Alright,” Kimball said, looking down at her datapad and scrolling through the list of questions she had come up with to find one that hadn’t been answered. “And where would they be staying? I assume you’d have a safehouse set up somewhere.”

“Pep will probably want to stay in her apartment,” Sanchez replied. “It’s on the outskirts of the city, and is protected by that AI. So obviously it’s got the best security system on the planet.”

“Which city?” Kimball asked.

“Boston, Mass,” Sachs said.

“Isn’t there a U.N.S.C. base there?”

“Chawla, yeah. That’s where they’ll probably come in.”

Kimball tapped a finger against the side of her datapad. “Interesting.” She certainly felt more comfortable now that she knew what she was getting into. Sachs and Sanchez had been very helpful, and now she had a good idea of the direction she needed to move in. Looking back up at the screen, she asked “is there any more information you could give me about any of this?”

Sachs made a clucking sound and squinted at the table, and Sanchez leaned back with his eyes upturned in thought. 

“Pepper’s father had an old boat warehouse by the harbor that I can have converted to a weapons storage,” Sanchez replied, glancing at her, then looking over at Sachs.

Sachs shook his head at him. “I’ve got nothing.”

“Very well,” Kimball said, drawing both of their attention back to her. “You’ve both been very helpful. Sachs, I’ll get Fox’s credentials to you ASAP so you can run them by your friends.”

Sachs nodded. “Sure thing. I’ll keep you updated on that as well.”

“I’m guessing you  _ are _ planning on sending Pep to Earth, then?” Sanchez asked.

Kimball nodded slowly. “As of right now, it’s a strong possibility.”

“Then I’ll get started working on that warehouse so it’ll be ready when she gets here,” Sanchez said. 

“Excellent,” Kimball said, tucking her datapad under her arm. “Thank you both for your time.”

Sachs gave her a dismissive wave, “don’t worry about it.” He grinned. “We’ll keep in touch, alright? You and your army just keep hanging in there. I’ll get back to you soon!”

“Take care,” Sanchez added. 

“You too,” Kimball replied, then watched as Sachs reached towards the camera, then the feed went black. She stood there in silence for a while, the wheels in her head turning, then she looked back over her shoulder in the direction of the lab door. She stared at it for a moment, then sighed and started towards it. It looked like she had a lot of homework to do.

 

* * *

 

“Ow ow ow you _ win _ , Carolina! You  _ win!” _ Wash gasped, squirming in pain on the sparring mat.

“I don’t need you to tell me that,” Carolina replied, amused, but she let go of hold she had his arm in and stepped back.

Wash hugged his arm against his chest and sat up, giving her an almost pouty look. “Jesus, boss, you could’ve dislocated my arm.”

“Which is why you should be glad that you’re my friend, otherwise I actually might have,” Carolina grinned, offering him her hand.

He took it, and she pulled him to his feet and stepped back as he dusted himself off with a frown on his face. “You know, one of these days you’re going to have to let me win,” he said, looking over at her.

“Why, just to stoke your ego?” Carolina joked.

“I don’t have an ego!”

Carolina laughed and shook her head, putting her hands on her hips. She was silent for a moment, looking back when Wash asked, “so has Kimball told you anything?”

“About...what Sarge told us earlier today?”

“Yeah.”

Carolina shook her head. “No. She went down to talk to those contacts that Fox set her up with. I think she’s still down there.”

Wash shifted his feet and rubbed the back of his neck. “How do you feel about it?”

“Sending her to Earth, you mean?” Carolina asked.

“Yeah.”

Carolina looked away, letting out a breath. “I think...she could do some good down there. She certainly seems to have the skills and connections to make what needs to happen  _ happen.” _

Wash nodded silently, then looked over towards the entrance to the training room.

Carolina frowned and did the same, listening hard and managing to pick up the sound of footsteps and humming coming towards them from down the hall. As she watched, Fox walked past the open doors, stopped, then took a step back and looked over at them, falling completely silent for a moment.

“Uh, you guys need something?” Fox asked.

“No,” Carolina replied.

Fox looked down the hall the way she came, then back at them. “Do you guys  _ usually _ stare at people as they walk past?”

“We were having a conversation,” Carolina said flatly.

“Okay,” Fox replied, then proceeded to stand there in an awkward silence for a good stretch of time before jerking her head back suddenly and exclaiming,  _ “oh! _ I’m interrupting you, aren’t I?”

“No,” Wash said quickly.

Carolina sighed. “We were just discussing the topic of sending you to Earth.” No sense in lying. Fox would figure it out eventually anyways.

“Oh,” Fox said, sounding surprised. “I always wondered when you guys had those top secret conversations about important stuff like this.”

“It’s not top secret,” Carolina replied, mildly annoyed at Fox’s tone.

“Oh, okay. Are you guys sparring?” Fox asked, changing the subject suddenly.

“We  _ were,” _ Wash replied. “Though it wasn’t much of a match.”

Carolina glanced at him, then looked back at Fox figuring that if the other woman was going to talk to them, they may as well learn something useful. “Is Kimball still down in the lab?”

“Not sure,” Fox replied, stepping into the room and walking towards them, stopping a few feet short of the sparring mat. “She’s been down there a while though, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s almost done.”

“Hm,” Carolina said, then straightened up and bent over and reached for her toes. Might as well multi-task. 

Fox fidgeted silently for a moment, then asked “do you think everyone would be cool with me leaving?”

“Not  _ everyone,” _ Wash replied. “It’s impossible to make everyone happy.”

“I know  _ that,” _ Fox replied.

“I think it could be a step in the right direction depending on how it’s handled,” Carolina said, straightening up and then stepping forward into a lunge. 

“Are you having second thoughts?” Wash asked with a frown, looking back at Fox.

Fox just shrugged. “Well, I know that Kimball and you guys don’t really like me, and since you’re the people making the decision, I just think it’s important to know you guys’ opinions on it, that’s all.”

Carolina, who had been in the middle of stretching her arm straight across her chest, looked over at Fox in confusion. “You think we don’t like you?”

“Lina-Bean, I  _ know _ you don’t,” Fox said flatly. “Not that it hurts my feelings or anything. I get that you don’t trust me, and I know that working with Locus has put me in a spot where you’ve got some weird feelings about me.”

Carolina switched legs and arms in her stretch, not taking her eyes off the other woman, squinting slightly. This whole time, she thought Fox didn’t like her, Wash, and Kimball, and it had all been because Fox thought they didn’t like  _ her? _ “It’s not that we don’t like you so much as--”

“As the fact that I hang out with Locus a lot, I  _ get it,” _ Fox interrupted, sounding almost frustrated. “No one wants to be around him, so no one wants to be around me.”

“Well, that’s...kind of gotten better, hasn’t it?” Wash asked.

Fox looked over at him, and even though Carolina couldn’t see her face, she just  _ knew _ the other woman bore an unamused expression.  _ “Has  _ it, Stripes?”

Wash pursed his lips and looked away.

“--It’s difficult to trust you after what happened here,” Carolina continued once she was sure she wouldn’t be interrupted again.

“I get that,” Fox sighed. “Believe me, I can’t go a day without someone reminding me that no one around here except like...Caboose, Doc, Donut, and Grey, really really trust me. And I don’t blame you guys. But I just think it’s important to like...try to  _ get _ you to trust me. Especially if this whole Earth thing is going to happen.”

Carolina finished stretching and stood up straight. “I’m pretty sure you’re going to Earth one way or another,” she said.

Fox tilted her head. “Really?”

“From what I’ve heard from Kimball so far, sending you down there, especially with the resources you have waiting for you, could benefit everyone,” Carolina said, nodding. “The only issue left is what will happen to Locus, but we’ll figure that out when the time comes.”

“I say we send him down there too,” Wash said, reaching his arms up over his head and leaning back in a stretch.

Carolina stared at him. “You’re being serious right now?”

Wash straightened back up and gestured vaguely at Fox. “Well, yeah. I mean, do you really think anyone’s gonna want him  _ here?” _

“Fair enough, but that’s not our decision,” Carolina replied.

“But you agree with me right?”

Carolina sighed again. “I don’t like the idea, but you also have a good point.”

“Iiiiinteresting,” Fox said, drawing attention back to her. “You guys discuss this with Kimball and the Peanut Gallery yet?”

“Kimball knows how I feel about it,” Carolina replied. 

“I’m sure that she’ll call a meeting after she finishes with your contacts,” Wash added.

“Hmmmm,” Fox said, then put two fingers to the side of her helmet, muttering, “speak of the devil.”

Carolina exchanged a look with Wash, who shrugged, before looking back at Fox. “Was that her?”

“Kimball? Yeah. She wanted to know where I was. She’s coming to us,” Fox replied.

“Must be important,” Wash said softly.

They all fell silent for a moment, before Fox spoke up again. “So ‘Lina, is that like...your  _ real _ hair color?”

Carolina blinked. “It was when I was younger, but it got darker with age.”

“So you  _ do _ dye it.”

“Yes,” Carolina replied, suspiciously. “Why?”

Fox shrugged. “I dunno. It’s a cool color is all. Kinda similar to the color I dyed mine around the time I got the nickname ‘Fox.’ Just...mine was more like...actual  _ red _ red.”

“Yeah, I remember hearing you say that on the flight here from Nalome, and uh, was your teammate colorblind?” Wash asked.

“Ludwell was, in fact, very colorblind, and couldn’t tell the difference between orange and red,” Fox replied. “That’s four-hundred points to the man with the obviously bleached hair.”

“It’s not that obvious.”

“It’s  _ always _ been obvious, Wash,” Carolina replied, allowing a small smile to creep onto her face.

“Huh, so you Freelancers  _ do _ smile,” Fox said.

Carolina gave her a look. 

“What? You guys act so tough all the time. Or well. Stripes  _ tries _ to, but he’s really not that threatening.”

“Hey! I’m--” Wash cut off and looked sharply towards the training room doors, and Carolina and Fox quickly did the same. A moment later, Kimball stepped through and hurried towards them, a datapad tucked under her arm.

“General Kimball,” Fox greeted, dipping her head in acknowledgement. 

“Hello Fox,” Kimball replied, a little breathlessly. “I just finished speaking to General Sachs, and Captain Sanchez,” she said, looking back at Fox. “We’ve worked out some of the details, and determined our next steps.” She looked over at Wash, then Carolina, who raised her eyebrows at her in question. “I’m actually glad that the two of you are here, because I think you’d like to hear this ahead of time. Fox, in order for us to go through the proper channels and allow your proposed operation to be approved by the U.N.S.C., you need to be registered as a soldier under my command.”

Fox leaned back slightly, appearing startled. “Oh…’kay. What do I need to do for that?”

Kimball handed her the datapad. “Fill out that paperwork. All I need to do is approve it.”

Fox read over the document, then looked up slowly at Kimball. “This is the registration form for a lieutenant colonel in a position as a commanding officer,” she said, surprised.

Carolina walked over and looked over the datapad when Fox handed it to her, then raised her eyes at Kimball. “You’re going through with sending her to Earth.”

“After  _ The Staff of Charon _ is accessed and stalled, we have a window of opportunity to do so. Fox and her contacts have already confirmed that they have the resources to help prevent Hargrove from causing us further harm. It’d be a waste not to take them up on it, especially with how far we’ve come and how many lives we’ve lost because of this war,” Kimball explained quickly.

Carolina handed the datapad back to Fox, eyes never leaving Kimball. “Have you let the Reds and Blues know?”

“Once she’s done with that, I will,” Kimball replied, nodding at the documents Fox was currently filling out.

“If you don’t mind me asking, why lieutenant colonel?” Fox asked.

“Because the sort of operations you’ll be completing down there are above the paygrade of a captain,” Kimball replied.

“Ah,” Fox said, and started filling out the documents. “So just so we’re clear, I don’t want you paying me for any of this,” she said after a moment, not looking up at her. “I’m literally a billionaire, so like, keep it. Build a few bridges. Fill some potholes. I don’t care.”

“If you insist,” Kimball replied, sounding like she wasn’t the least bit torn up about it.

Carolina looked away over at Wash, who shrugged and offered her a half smile that she didn’t return. This was all happening much faster than she had expected it to.  _ Oh well, you made your opinion pretty clear. You can’t go back on it now, _ she thought, watching as Fox finished up the documents and handed the datapad back over to Kimball, who tucked it back under her arm and put two fingers from her free hand to the side of her helmet. 

“I just called for everyone to meet us here,” Kimball said, turning back to them.

“Wait, like  _ everyone _ everyone?” Wash asked.

“As in the Reds, Blues, their lieutenants, Doctor Grey, and Locus.”

Carolina eyed Kimball when she heard Locus’ name, but said nothing. 

It took very little time for everyone to find their way to the training room, and Carolina found herself shoulder to shoulder between Wash and Tucker. Fox stood a little ways away, on the fringe of the group, closer to Kimball, with Grey right next to her. 

“I know we’re all busy today, so I’m going to keep this quick,” Kimball began, looking over the small crowd. “Most of you heard from Sarge that I spoke to two of Fox’s contacts from Earth today. The three of us discussed some framework, and in doing so, I came to the decision to follow through with Fox’s earlier proposal to send her to Earth to ensure that Hargrove faces the justice he deserves.”

“Wait, you’re leaving?!” Caboose exclaimed at Fox.

“Only for a little while,” Fox replied, hunching her shoulders slightly.

“How’s that gonna work?” Simmons asked Kimball.

“Fox is officially registered as a lieutenant colonel under my command, allowing her a higher level of operational command once she arrives on Earth,” Kimball replied.

“Wait, so she outranks us now?” Tucker asked.

“Sorry,” Fox replied.

“It doesn’t matter,” Kimball said exasperatedly. “What matters is that after this meeting is over, I’m going to send her credentials to her contact on Earth, General Sachs, and he’s going to get her, and the operation to cut down Hargrove’s supporters, approved by the U.N.S.C.”

“Oh  _ now _ they’re going to help us,” Bitters spat.

“The way General Sachs worded it, the U.N.S.C. is aware that it failed us, and should comply with what we send their way,” Kimball told him. “But the point of this meeting isn’t entirely about that.” She turned her head and looked over at Locus, who stood directly behind Fox with his arms crossed.

Carolina watched as he caught her gaze and inclined his head slightly in acknowledgement.

“Okay, hey, pause-- real quick, uh,” Carolina looked over as Tucker spoke up. “You’re not-- ‘cause like we all saw that little look thing you just did. You’re not  _ actually--” _

“Well  _ you’re _ not gonna wanna go down there with me,  _ are _ you, Thin Mint?” Fox asked, cutting him off and leaning towards him with her hands on her hips. 

_ “No!” _

Fox straightened up, “okay then  _ what’s  _ the  _ problem?” _

“Can I  _ please _ finish?” Kimball asked, frustrated.

Carolina gave Tucker a look out of the corner of her eye, daring him to protest, but he said nothing.

_ “Thank you,” _ Kimball said, then continued. “Ever since Fox first brought up the topic of going to Earth, I’ve been thinking about what it means for the order of things around here. The reality of the situation is that we don’t know if Hargrove is going to send more pirates our way, so I can’t send any of you, Reds and Blues. Because the truth is, we wouldn’t last without you. Our numbers depleted significantly after the last major battle against Charon, and in these last two pirate attacks, we lost even more lives,” Kimball explained. 

“I hate to interrupt,” Fox said, raising a hand and quickly lowering it once she had Kimball’s attention, “but I’m also definitely gonna need someone who understands the concept of...subtlety. Which...uh...none of you guys really have.”

“You’re kidding right? There’s no one more subtle than Double-O-Donut!” Donut exclaimed.

“Actually, you...pretty much just proved my point,” Fox replied.

“Furthermore, none of you aside from Doc and Grey have worked closely with Fox, which could lead to some communication problems,” Kimball added flatly. 

“And you definitely need us here,” Grey said.

“So just so we have it in writing,’ Fox began, holding her hands up in front of her with her fingers splayed, “you’re like one-hundred percent considering sending me and Sunshine to Earth?”

“I’m not particularly  _ fond _ of the idea, but realistically speaking, it’s the best choice,” Kimball replied.

“No it’s not!” Bitters exclaimed.

“Okay, so look at it this way, we’re both probably gonna die down there  _ anyways. _ So it’s two birds with one stone. Everyone gets what they want!” Fox said, the false cheer in her voice barely concealing a growl.

“I don’t know... _ I _ don’t want you to die,” Jensen said just loudly enough for Carolina to hear her. 

“The only other option aside would be to send myself or Wash down there with her,” Carolina said. “And I agree with Kimball’s statement that there’s a chance that Hargrove could send more pirates.”

“Okay, yeah, but it’s just  _ one _ of you,” Palomo argued.

_ Yes, but Wash wouldn’t last a second down there with Fox’s personality, and I would very much like to stay here with Kimb-- _ Carolina chomped down on her bottom lip before she could finish the thought. “Wash?”

Wash looked over at Kimball, then to Fox, then back at her. “Your call, boss,” he said simply.

_ So that’s a no, _ Carolina thought, looking over at Kimball.

“Hey, uh, honestly?” Grif spoke up, drawing the attention of everyone in the room. “I’m really fucking tired and I just want to go home, and if sending these two assholes to Earth to fuck Hargrove’s shit up can make that happen sooner, then I’m all for it.” He paused, then to Locus, added, “plus you scare the  _ fuck _ out of me and I’d rather not have you around. No offense.”

“None taken,” Locus replied flatly.

“If it ends this war sooner, I’m all for it,” Andersmith added, and was accompanied with murmurs of agreement from everyone else.

Carolina looked back at Kimball, raising her eyebrows slightly.

“The terms of this arrangement will be discussed in depth later, and you will all be notified once that has happened, but for right now, this is the decision that has been made,” Kimball said, looking around. “Any questions?”

Carolina looked around, then shook her head.

“Then you’re all dismissed,” Kimball said, then added, “Fox, Locus, and Grey, I want the three of you to stay here for a moment.”

Carolina watched as the three in mention looked back towards Kimball, and she did the same, catching her reflection in her blue visor. Before Kimball could take notice, however, she quickly turned and followed Wash out of the room. 

 

* * *

 

“This week can’t get any fucking weirder, I swear,” Bitters huffed.

“Careful,” Andersmith said. “The last thing you want to do is invoke Murphy’s Law.”

“I don’t get why everyone’s so upset, I mean it makes  _ sense!” _ Jensen added.

“All I know is that I’d rather see that green asshole as far away from us as possible,” Grif said, stretching.

“Aw, but Grif, what if he misses us?” Caboose asked.

“Dude, he won’t miss us. He doesn’t even  _ like _ us,” Tucker added. 

“He  _ did _ save you, Captain Tucker,” Andersmith reminded. 

“And me and Doctor Grey,” Jensen piped up.

“I mean,  _ yeah. _ But that doesn’t make him anyone’s best friend. He’s just doing what Kimball  _ told _ him to do,” Tucker replied. 

“The guy still killed a fuck ton of us,” Bitters added.

And while that might have been true, the fact that Locus was listening to Kimball at  _ all _ , and doing his best to coexist with them, displayed a significant level of improvement in Andersmith’s mind. The way he saw it, was that if Locus didn’t fit in here, then he’d be better off helping somewhere else, right? Andersmith thought about this as he looked over at Wash, who was conversing with Carolina. 

After the meeting with Kimball, they had all gathered in the mess hall for a brief unofficial meeting. But so far, it had been nothing but everyone reflecting on what had just happened, and debating all the new information. So far, the consensus was that most of them seemed to gearing towards the idea of being rid of Locus. 

“It just doesn’t feel  _ right,” _ Tucker huffed. “Like,  _ yes,  _ I want that jackass gone, but in a fucking  _ cell, _ not  _ loose _ running around on Earth!”

_ Key word being ‘most,’ _ Andersmith thought with a sigh. 

“Look at it this way, Captain Tucker,” McAllister said, “it’s kind of like...extreme community service. Locus fucked with us, and now he’s paying for it by risking his life to beat up Charon.”

Tucker gave her a look, then said, “yeah, but how are we gonna know that he’s actually going to  _ help _ us down there?!”

“We don’t,” Andersmith spoke up, surprising himself. “But we didn’t know that he was going to come back after the last fight with the pirates either.”

“He didn’t have a reason to,” Bitters agreed begrudgingly.

Tucker fixed his glare in Andersmith’s direction, then uncrossed his arms with a sigh. “Carolina?”

Carolina blinked at him, then said, “Fox has both his trust and respect. That alone should be enough to keep him in line. And I’m sure that Kimball will find a way to keep in constant contact with the two of them. She wouldn’t make this choice without thinking any of that through.”

“Yeah, it’s still a terrible idea though,” Tucker muttered.

_ “Risky,” _ Matthews corrected. “General Kimball doesn’t come up with terrible ideas.”

“Look, the way I see it, we don’t want him here, Fox is the only person who gets along with him, and she can’t go down there by herself,” Donut said. “You know, I don’t think any of us have to  _ like _ it, but it’s still gonna  _ happen!” _

“He’s right,” Wash said with a nod when Tucker looked over his way.

Tucker was silent for a moment, then huffed out an angry, “yeah, okay, fine. Send him with her. I’m sick of him slinking around like some creepy-ass spider anyways.”

“So do we all basically agree that we want to send them both to Earth?” Grif asked, and there was something like surprise in his voice.

“It’ll be the first time we’ve immediately agreed on  _ anything _ in regards to those two,” Carolina said, nodding at him. 

“And probably the fifth time we’ve agreed on anything at  _ all _ ,” Doc added.

“Okay, so we send them to Earth, and they run off and we never see them again,” Palomo said. 

Andersmith let out a sigh. “Neither of them had to come here and help us. And this entire conversation is happening because Locus snuck off, took the rest of the pirates hostage, and brought them back for interrogation instead of...I don’t know, convincing them to call the ship they arrived in so he could run away?”

“Not only that, but you realize that there’s a good chance they could both be killed, right?” Wash said. “They aren’t going down there for a paid vacation, they’re going down there to try to stop Hargrove from doing even more damage, and make sure that he gets the justice he deserves.”

“You’re actually taking their side on this?” Palomo asked incredulously. 

“It’s like I said, it makes sense.”

“Well, that settles it! So who wants to tell Kimball that we’re on board with all of this?” Sarge asked, looking around at everyone. 

Andersmith let his eyes wander to the floor. They were supposed to be off working on repairs and training and helping out. He wasn’t used to going against orders, he realized, feeling a little giddy. Of course, the feeling faded when he came to the conclusion that Kimball could be upset at them. “Maybe we should wait until she calls another meeting?” he suggested.

“That, or I could go talk to her later,” Carolina suggested. 

“How about whichever one comes first?” Simmons asked.

“Deal,” Carolina replied.

“Then it’s settled,” Wash said. “But for right now, we all have jobs to do.”

“I should probably go back to helping Lopez in the motor pool,” Simmons said as he exited.

“And I’ve got a nap to take,” Grif grumbled, folding his arms behind his head and laying back on one of the tables.

“Doc and I will be having wine and cheese hour if you need us!” Donut said in a singsong voice as he led Doc out into the hallway.

“We’ve got repairs to work on,” Wash said, looking over where Andersmith was seated with the other lieutenants. “Come on, Grif, you can join us.”

“Can’t. Body glued to table,” Grif said.

“Captain Grif, will you please just go before he makes us run laps again?” Matthews begged as Sarge barked, “Grif, git yer lazy ass up!”

“Aw come on, Grif, it’ll be fun!” Caboose said. “We’ll get to use the cement mixer, and screwdrivers, and at dinner they bring us sandwiches--”

Grif jack-knifed upwards so fast at the mention of sandwiches that Andersmith was sure he was going to flip the table. “Fine, fine, I’m  _ going! _ But only because there’s food,” he said, pushing past everyone else. 

“Of course he is,” Sarge said, and Andersmith couldn’t help but smile at the apparent eye-roll in the older Marine’s voice. 

Wash simply shook his head, exchanged a look with Carolina, said, “let’s go,” and followed Grif.

 

* * *

 

“Well that went better than expected,” Fox said flatly once everyone had left the training room. 

Kimball couldn’t help but agree. The meeting had been quick and sloppy and she probably could have thought through what she was going to say a little better than she had...but the reception had still been largely understanding. Taking a deep breath, she looked over at Fox and said, “we need to discuss the terms of the two of you going down there.”

“I figured,” Fox said, then sat down cross-legged on the floor, patting the ground in front of her. “Sit,” she urged. “You’re stressed out. Give your body a break for five minutes.”

Kimball looked over at Grey, who nodded and took a seat next to Fox. With a sigh, she did the same, and immediately felt a great deal of tension leave her body. Wordlessly, she looked over at Locus, who had chosen to remain standing with his arms crossed a few feet to the left of Fox. She decided not to bother with him.

Kimball cleared her throat, then started, looking over at Fox. “First things first, I want you both to understand my expectations. Both of you have done exceptionally well defending the interests of the people of Chorus. You’re to continue doing so in a way that reflects well on this colony and my men.” She turned her gaze to Locus. “That means no unnecessary actions or violence, no criminal activities--  _ nothing _ that will deter the U.N.S.C. from providing you with operational approval. If you do any of these things, your mission on Earth will be terminated, and you will be summoned back here for assessment and possible detainment. Do I make myself clear?” She held Locus’ gaze until he gave her a nod. “Good.”

“Uh, for the record, we might need to operate outside of the law a few times to do what needs to be done,” Fox spoke up.

Kimball looked over at her. “Such as?”

Fox shrugged. “Breaking and entering?”

“Also kidnapping, assault, murder, potentially a bunch of traffic violations,” Grey added. “I mean, they’re going to be threatening a bunch of Hargrove’s friends and possibly sabotaging their businesses. None of which is legal.”

Kimball gave her a blank stare. “I was talking in terms of war crimes.”

“I see,” Grey said.

Kimball looked back over at Fox. “Prior to every mission the two of you embark on, you are to send me a briefing of the details, and after said mission is complete, you are to give me a full report of what happened. In video format. And both of you must be present. Is this something you will be able to do?”

Fox nodded. “The AI should be able to hook up a signal to the quantum computer. You can reach us with that.”

“I can help set that up on our end too,” Grey added. 

“Perfect,” Kimball replied. “On the topic of video calls, you are to give me a report of everything you do each day. Once again, both of you must be present.”

“I’m guessing we’ll set the time for when we can do that once we get down there, since missions might overlap with any sort of set schedule we might try to come up with,” Fox said.

“That’s fine,” Kimball said with a nod.

“Do the two of you have somewhere you can stay?” Grey asked. “I’m guessing your contacts would have set something up.”

“They mentioned that you would likely want to use your apartment on the outskirts of Boston as your safehouse,” Kimball said to Fox. “Is this true?”

Fox nodded. “Yeah, it’s got everything we need there. Plus it’s close to Emblem.”

“Good, then the two of you will be staying there unless instructed otherwise,” Kimball replied. She looked over at Locus. “Will that be a problem?”

“No,” he said with what might have been a hint of a growl in his voice.

“It has a lot of space, so don’t worry,” Fox said, looking up at him. 

“It would also be a good idea to keep a log of any weapons they might acquire, which ones they use, and how much ammo they use,” Grey added. 

“That’s a good idea,” Kimball replied.

“I was actually gonna do that anyways,” Fox said with a shrug. “I’m also gonna let you know of any teammates we pick up, since that’s kind of one of our goals for when we get down there.”

“I want you to build me a profile of each of them before you invite them to your team,” Kimball said. 

“Not a problem,” Fox replied.

“You’re to arrive at Chawla Base. I’m going to work with General Sachs to get both of you approved to have your power armor ready for use at your disposal. Captain Sanchez mentioned a warehouse, so that’s likely where it will end up,” Kimball continued. “Use it at your discretion, but let me know ahead of time. And I want you both to record your actions with your helmets and send them to me.”

“I can analyze them for you,” Grey offered. “You’ve got more important things to worry about anyways. And I can even show the two of them how to set up a live feed.”

“That would actually probably work out way better,” Fox said to her. “That way we’re not clogging up the airways sending over a two-hundred gigabyte file all the way here.”

“Fine,” Kimball said, trying to think of anything else she hadn’t covered. Unable to come up with anything, she then looked over at Locus. “Before either of you get comfortable, let me make myself clear. Despite the vast improvement you’ve shown since you first arrived here, you still have a  _ lot _ to prove, and if things had gone any other way, I wouldn’t have even  _ considered _ this decision. The  _ only _ reason I am sending you down to Earth  _ at all _ is because of Fox and the circumstances she brought with her. If you step out of line, I have no qualms about bringing you back here for detainment.” She paused for a moment to allow her words to sink in, then continued. “General Sachs and Captain Sanchez will be keeping an eye on you alongside Fox. If anything happens, one of them  _ will _ let me know.” And she paused again, because Locus’ demeanor had shifted. It was almost like he had started to fold in on himself, and Kimball recognized this as the same body language she had seen from him when he had sought her out on the cliff weeks ago. And she let out a long sigh and leaned back somewhat, eyes never leaving him. “I need to know,” she said quietly. “I need to know that this is a responsibility that you can handle.” And out of the corner of her eye, she saw Fox look up at him, awaiting his response.

Locus was silent, but returned Fox’s gaze for a moment before looking back at Kimball. And when he spoke, she could hear the exhaustion in his voice. “It is.”

Kimball took a deep breath, holding his gaze for a moment, then said “then go down there and prove it.”

“So...so this is official?” Kimball looked over at Fox when she spoke up.

“It’s official,” Kimball replied with a nod.

And Fox was on her feet, bouncing around in excitement in a heartbeat. “Oh-ho  _ yes! _ This is  _ awesome!” _

Kimball rose to her feet, and Grey did the same, dusting the back of her pants off with the hand that wasn’t holding a mug of coffee. 

“Once we gain access to  _ The Staff of Charon, _ I’ll arrange a Condor for the two of you to take to Earth,” Kimball said, tucking her datapad under her arm.

“Oh man, thank you so much!” Fox exclaimed, looking over at Locus excitedly before turning her gaze back to Kimball. “This is amazing, Kimball. Really. I promise we won’t let you down!”

And Kimball looked over at Grey, who gave a little laugh and shook her head in amusement at the floor, before turning back to Fox and saying “I sure hope so.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ya’ll I rewrote this entire chapter because shit went in a totally different direction than I expected it to. God help me.   
> I know it’s really long by the way. I’m sorry. 41 whole pages in Google Docs. But also this is probably gonna be a similar length to what most of the chapters are going to be like in Arc 2, so get ready. We have one more chapter to go before we finally hit the real meat of this story.
> 
> So much happens in this chapter and it feels so rushed and I'm not a super big fan of how it turned out but oh well.
> 
> En Español:  
> \- “Give me a second.”  
> \- “Yes.”  
> \- “Yes, but they’re rising.”  
> \- “Wait, you can understand me?”
> 
> Kimball is currently running on caffeine and sheer willpower.  
> MY TWO GRANDPA CHARACTERS!!!! I’m so glad you finally get to meet them. Sachs is so cool. Sanchez is so cool. I love my cool old dudes. 
> 
> C++ is the language used for the programming in most modern fighter jets, btw. It probably changes in the future, but I’m too lazy to come up with a WHOLE NEW LANGUAGE and figure out the mechanics of it and whatnot. Oh well, that’s what suspension of disbelief is for.
> 
> LOCUS IS A HUGE DORK AND WATER IS WET  
> If he fits, he sits :3
> 
> Tucker we get it, you don’t like the bug man cuz he hurt ya boi. Chill out a little bit tho.


	17. Fahrenheit Four-Fifty-What?

Carolina let out a long sigh, watching as the thick blanket of night warmed into a deep cyan tailed by a brilliant orange pink behind the mountains in the distance. Even in the early dawn, she still found it so strange that the world was as silent as it was, with no sounds other than a light breeze brushing against the jungle foliage. It reminded her of road trip she had gone on as a child, waking up to nothing but the sound of tires on asphalt and her parents’ hushed voices, looking up to see the birds perched on power lines silhouetted against the sunrise.

It was  _ almost _ peaceful.

Under her helmet, Carolina frowned and looked back towards the soldiers who had accompanied her for patrol, eyes resting on Fox, who had insisted on coming along. Of course she was a morning person. Carolina quickly turned her head away when the other woman caught her gaze, and stepped away from the cliff, starting once again down the trail they had been walking along. She listened as the others realized she had begun moving again, their feet scuffing against dead leaves and branches as they hurried to keep up with her. None of them said anything, however, and Carolina was grateful for the silence.

Two days ago, after Kimball had her private meeting with Fox, Locus, and Grey, she had met up with the other woman to inform her of the opinion of the Reds and Blues and their lieutenants. Kimball had seemed grateful to hear it, at the very least, but it hadn’t been enough to clear the stress from the face, or the furrow between her brows. It worried Carolina, but she had held her tongue. 

Staring ahead, she focused on the trail, ears pricking when she heard the sound of someone pick up their pace and draw closer to her. Out of the corner of her eye, she realized it was Fox, and sighed inwardly, waiting for the other woman to break the silence. 

But Fox was quiet for a while, simply matching Carolina’s pace, looking around at her surroundings. It wasn’t until they came to a bend in the trail that she finally spoke. “I wanted to apologize for what happened two days ago.”

Carolina almost stopped right then, and wound up scuffing her heel against the ground, but managed to keep her stride. “What for?” she asked evenly.

Fox looked over at her. “I don’t know. I just feel like I should.” Then she turned her head away and was silent again for a while. “I think...I think there’s a kind of negative energy between me and you and Wash. And I know why. I know it has to do with Locus. And the fact that I used to work for Charon. And that I didn’t tell you the whole truth about who I am. And you have every right to dislike me for all of that, because it all makes sense.” Fox turned her gaze forward, looking down the trail. “And I know that Kimball is stressed out because of me. And I know I’ve put her in a spot where she’s needed to make some tough decisions. And I wish it wasn’t that way.” She looked back at Carolina. “I guess...what I’m trying to say here...is that I don’t want to be your enemy. And that...I wish I could be your friend, because you and Wash and the Reds and Blues are really... _ cool. _ And that I...you guys remind me of my old team...I guess. And you guys are really lucky that you have each other.”

Carolina stared at her in silence for a moment, thinking hard about what Fox said. Then she replied “I don’t dislike you. None of us do. Things have just been difficult these past few months. A lot of changes have been happening, and not all of them good. A lot of people around here are just worried about getting hurt again.”

Fox nodded silently and said nothing for a while, keeping pace with Carolina. “I’ve said it a hundred times now; I’m on your side.”

“I know,” Carolina said, and something pushed her to add, “I believe you.”

Fox looked over at her. “Thanks.”

Carolina didn’t reply, but nodded once in acknowledgement, then turned her eyes forward down the trail. “Will you be able to do it?”

“Hmm?”

Realizing she had given no context to what she had just asked, Carolina replied “Kimball met with us after talking to you, Locus, and Grey, and told us what boundaries the two of you needed to follow while you’re on Earth.”

“You’re asking me if we’ll stick to those boundaries,” Fox said. She looked away. “It’s a mess down there too, what with all of the corporate corruption and the U.N.S.C. looking the other way. We’re going to get tied up in a pretty nasty web.” She looked back at Carolina. “But that doesn’t mean that we’re going to act without reason. And we’re  _ certainly _ not going to step out of line,  _ especially _ considering the opportunity we’ve been given to do some serious good.”

Under her helmet, Carolina chewed her tongue. “Our primary concern, as always, is still Locus.”

Fox let out a small laugh. “He won’t be a problem, trust me. And having Sachs and Sanchez around will help enforce the idea that he can’t get away with anything stupid. Not that he’d likely  _ try _ to at this point.”

Carolina thought about this for a moment, her mind going back to the initial meeting Kimball had called with everyone two days ago. The fact that Kimball had enough faith that Fox and Locus would be able to accomplish their mission on Earth  _ alone _ had been enough to solidify Carolina’s opinion on the matter. Fox had done an excellent job of rehabilitating Locus to the point that she had, and it was obvious that he trusted her. But knowing that the woman wouldn’t be alone in dealing with him on Earth had definitely helped ease Carolina’s mind a bit. And hearing Fox saying it herself helped even more. “Good,” she said.

“Mhm,” Fox replied. Then she asked, “how’s Kimball doing?”

“She’s been busy.”

“Well, I guessed as much. I’m just asking because she’s had a lot on her shoulders, and you two seem...close.”

Carolina looked over at Fox, not sure if the other woman was trying to imply something or not. “She’s a friend.”

Fox shrugged defensively. “I  _ figured. _ But is she okay?”

Carolina narrowed her eyes, still certain that Fox had been hinting at something.  _ Better not to address it,  _ she thought. “She’s stressed, but she’ll be fine. She’s been through much worse.”

Fox nodded silently at the ground, then asked “and how are  _ you _ doing?”

“Me?” Carolina asked, a little stunned at the question.

“Unless there’s another Carolina around here…” Fox replied, amusement in her voice.

Under her helmet, Carolina frowned. “I’ve been...I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

_ “Yes _ I’m sure,” Carolina replied in a voice that was snappier than she intended.

Fox appeared unfazed. “Okay.” She was silent again for a very long while, and Carolina couldn’t be more grateful. Then she spoke up again, in a much quieter voice, and said, “y’know, I think the two of you would benefit from more time together. Especially now, when all these crazy changes are happening. I’ve always found solace in being around the people I care about when I’m feeling overwhelmed.”

Carolina bit her lip.  _ Yes _ she would like to spend more time with Kimball, but at the same time...there was something there that she didn’t want to face. Something she didn’t think she was ready for. And the fact that Fox was able to pinpoint it and bring it up only made her more uncomfortable. “What are you trying to say?”

Fox looked taken aback. “Nothing, other than that if things are weird around here like you said they are, then you guys need to stick together.” She paused, then added, “there’s no subtext to any of what I’m saying. I just think that you and Kimball are good for each other, and she doesn’t really seem to have many friends aside from you and Grey.”

Carolina looked back at Fox, relaxing a little.  _ Maybe I overestimated her, _ she thought, feeling somewhat guilty for her previous suspicion. 

“And with me and Locus going to Earth to mess Hargrove up, you guys will have more time to kick back and unwind.”

“I...see,” Carolina replied. “We’ll still need to keep ourselves prepared for the worst-case scenario.”

Fox shrugged. “I know, but you all deserve to take a load off, is all,  _ especially _ Kimball.”

And Carolina agreed with that. She was silent for a while as they neared the end of their patrol and began their descent down the cliff towards headquarters. “I’ll...talk to her,” she said suddenly, once they had reached the valley.

Fox looked over at her and gave an approving nod. “Good. It’ll be good for both of you.”

Carolina didn’t say anything to her, but gave the next patrol a nod as they walked past her group. When they arrived back at headquarters, and the rest of the men on her patrol dispersed, she turned back to Fox and said, “it was...nice...talking to you.”

“Really? You sounded like I was pulling teeth the entire time,” Fox replied.

Carolina felt a spark of frustration in her chest at that, but quickly buried it. “It’s like I said, things are difficult.”

“I get that,” Fox replied, sounding like she meant it. “Which is why I said what I said. Really, you and Kimball should spend some time together. You seem to have a lot in common. Maybe you could even get the other girls around here involved and have a ladies night or something. Watch a shitty movie and do facials and stuff.”

“I’ll consider it,” Carolina said flatly.

“I hope so,” Fox replied, then said, “well, I’ll be seeing you,” and turned and started down the hall. 

Carolina waited until she turned the corner to let out a long sigh, trying to relieve some of the tension that had built in her chest. She leaned back against the wall and took her helmet off, tucking it under her arm and running her free hand through her hair. She stared up at the ceiling for a moment, then took her helmet back in both hands, looking at her reflection in her visor for a moment. Ever since two days ago when she’d had her stunning revelation that she wanted to stay on Chorus with Kimball, a knot had formed in her chest that was slowly winding tighter. 

As she stared at her reflection, she watched her face screw up in a mixture of worry and pain, and she looked away, her grip on her helmet tightening.  _ Come on, Carolina. What’s  _ **_wrong_ ** _ with you?  _ She thought angrily. She looked back at her visor, noticing for the first time how tired she looked. “We’re friends,” she told her reflection quietly. “She’s a friend.”  _ Right? _

With a sigh, Carolina turned her helmet around and put it back on, stepping away from the wall. She stood there for a moment, thinking, her mind wandering back to the conversation she had with Fox. The other woman’s advice, while unwarranted, seemed good-intentioned. And she’d certainly had a point that Kimball needed people by her side.  _ Nothing’s changed. She’s your friend. She needs you,  _ Carolina thought, steeling herself. She looked back down the hall the way Fox had gone, ideas blooming in her head. The thought of a girl’s night was certainly appealing. Her, Connie, and South had them all the time during Freelancer before things took a turn for the worst. 

Carolina felt a small smile form under her helmet, and felt the knot in her chest begin to loosen ever so slightly. Taking a deep breath, she started down the hall. She would need to consult with Donut later to figure out how to run a movie night.

 

* * *

 

“Simmons. Hello. Earth to Simmons. You in there, buddy?”

Simmons looked up irately at Tucker.  _ “What?” _

“You’ve been staring at that sandwich for like  _ ten minutes,”  _ Tucker said, leaning back in his seat and taking a sip of his water bottle.

Simmons sighed. “I’m tired.”

“So take a nap,” Grif suggested, looking over at him as he took a bit of one of the two sandwiches he had stacked on his plate. 

“Not that kind of tired,” Simmons replied.

Across the table, Tucker eyed him curiously. “You all good, man?”

Simmons let out another, longer sigh. “I guess,” he said, and forced himself to take a bite of his sandwich. 

“Talk,” Grif said, his mouth full.

“Chew,” Simmons shot back.

Grif gave him a look.

Tucker rolled his eyes.

Simmons frowned and looked back down at his tray. “A lot of stuff has been happening really fast, is all.”

“I hear you,” Tucker replied. “All that shit with Charon, and then the moon, and then  _ Locus,  _ and now him and Fox are going to fuckin’  _ Earth.” _

“I mean, we all kind of agreed it was a good call,” Grif said, and Simmons thanked the heavens that he at least  _ swallowed _ beforehand. “Y’know, so Locus wouldn’t be around anymore.”

“I mean, I sort of got used to having him around,” Simmons admitted. “It’s not like he bothered anyone. And he always kept his distance.”

“And now he’s going to be keeping even  _ more _ distance on a planet that’s super far away from here that we won’t be able to get to if something bad happens,” Tucker added.

_ Boom, _ Simmons thought. 

“Wash had a point, though. They  _ are _ both probably going to die,” Grif said.

“Yeah, but how is that fair to Fox?” Simmons asked, his voice rising in pitch slightly. “I mean, after everything she’s been through. All of her friends  _ died _ because of Charon! And now she could too!”

“Well, Kimball said that she was gonna assemble a team once she was down there. So it’s not like it’ll just be her and Locus, thankfully,” Tucker said. “But I still don’t trust the guy. I don’t care  _ how  _ well Fox has been handling him.”

“I don’t think anyone really  _ does,”  _ Grif said, taking another bite. 

“There’s just been a lot going on,” Simmons said. “It’s just been really stressful.”

_ “Yeah,” _ Tucker agreed.

Grif didn’t say anything for a moment, but Simmons could see him watching him out of the corner of his eye. “Eat,” he said suddenly, nodding at the sandwich on Simmons’ tray.

Simmons pushed his tray towards Grif. “You can have it.”

“Uh-uh,” Grif said, pushing it back in front of Simmons. “Eat. It’ll help.”

Simmons looked over at Tucker for help, who met his gaze with astonishment on his face. 

“Uh,” Tucker said, shaking it off, “he’s...he’s right, man.”

Simmons blinked, then frowned down at his sandwich.  _ “Fine,” _ he muttered, and took another bite of it. He made it about halfway through when he noticed Grif watching him. He swallowed self-consciously, then asked, “what?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re staring.”

“Yeah, ‘cause I wanna make sure you finish it.”

“I’m not a little kid, Grif!”

“You act like it sometimes.”

_ “You’re _ one to talk.”

“Hey lovebirds, could you give it a rest?” Tucker asked, taking another sip of his water and side-eyeing the two of them. 

Simmons gave both him and Grif a look, then took an angry bite of his sandwich.

Grif just grinned and did the same. 

Tucker watched the two of them in silence for a moment, then set his water bottle down on the table and said, “so the lieutenants started a betting pool.”

Simmons, who had just taken another bite, raised his eyebrows at Tucker in question.

“For what?” Grif asked.

“They’re betting to see how long Locus lasts down on Earth before he does something evil and Fox and Kimball have to kick his ass,” Tucker said.

“Tell me you did something about it,” Simmons pleaded.

“Pfft,  _ no.  _ Are you kidding me? It’s hilarious!” Tucker replied with a laugh.

“So how much money did you put in?” Grif asked nonchalantly.

Tucker pulled a face and jerked back in feigned disgust, crossing his arms. “Uh,  _ none?” _

Grif raised his eyes to meet Tucker’s gaze, and held it as he took another bite of his sandwich, chewed it, swallowed it, then washed it down with a sip of water. “I’m fat, not stupid, Tucker,” he said finally.

And Tucker broke. He uncrossed his arms and dropped his shoulders and said, “fifty bucks.”

_ “Seriously?!” _ Simmons screeched, then quickly hunched his shoulders when he realized he’d drawn the attention of everyone else in the mess hall. 

“Finish your sandwich,” Grif said with amusement in his voice. Then to Tucker he asked “what was your bet?”

“Five weeks,” Tucker replied. “I figured that was the best shot, y’know? Like it’s enough time for him to get settled and figure out how things are gonna work down there. But not long enough for Kimball and Fox to stop waiting for him to get into trouble. And by then they’ll probably have a team put together and be doing serious hardcore missions and stuff, which is plenty of cover for him to try to pull something. But Fox can also  _ apparently _ tell when he’s lying, so if he  _ does _ try something, she’ll figure it out.”

“Hm,” Grif said, taking another bite of his sandwich. “I would’ve gone with three.”

_ “Chew,” _ Simmons said, giving him a look out of the corner of his eye.

Grif shook his head and rolled his eyes, but, to Simmons’ surprise, did as he was told. 

“Why?” Tucker asked, eyes narrowed.

“Okay, so first week is gonna be him trying to figure stuff out and adjust to being on Earth and basically  _ living _ with Fox, right? Second week, he’s gonna have her routine and all of the rules pinned. And if they have teammates, he’ll be looking at getting  _ their _ routines pinned  _ too. _ By week three, he’ll have figured everything out about all of them, how the rules work, and how to work the system to his advantage. By the  _ end _ of week three, probably during a mission, he’ll try to break the rules that he knows he can get past,” Grif explained. “Whether or not Fox and Kimball find out is up to how he does it, though.”

Simmons finished his sandwich and took a sip of his water. “You’re both nuts. This shouldn’t even be a  _ thing.” _

Grif shrugged. “Not saying I think it’s right. But I  _ do _ think it’s funny.”

“And what if Locus finds out about it?”

“Then  _ everyone’s _ guesses’ll be wrong, because he’ll probably kill all of us,” Grif replied with a smirk.

“Like he could beat  _ me,” _ Tucker scoffed.

“He literally almost killed Wash and Carolina,” Simmons replied flatly.

“And had a spaceship dropped on him and  _ survived,” _ Grif added.

“So? You took like fifty-seven hits to the nuts from Tex, and  _ you _ lived. He’s not special,” Tucker scoffed.

Simmons snickered. 

“Why do you always bring that up?” Grif moaned. 

“‘Cause it’s funny.”

“It wasn’t when it happened.”

“It was  _ kinda _ funny when it happened.”

“Was it funny when we all mistook you for Tex and started kicking your ass?” Grif asked.

“Looking back,  _ yeah.” _

“But in the moment?”

“Yeah okay fine.”

The three of them sat in silence for a while. Grif finished his second sandwich, and Tucker stared off at the far wall and bounced his knee under the table, and Simmons tapped his fingers against the edge of his tray. He finally drew in a deep breath and looked over at Grif, watching as he pushed his tray towards the middle of the table.

Grif caught his gaze and met it, then asked, “feel better?”

“Huh?”

“Now that you ate something. Do you feel better?”

Simmons blinked. “Oh. Uh. I...I  _ guess?” _

Grif leaned back against the wall that the table was pushed up against, facing him and propping one leg up on the bench and dropping his hands into his lap. “You wanna talk about it?”

“That’s  _ my _ line,” Simmons replied.

Tucker looked at both of them. “What is this? Therapy Time with Doctor Grif?”

Grif shot him a look. “Dude, it’s been a rough two months. We’ve all been feeling weird.”

“Hey, I never said it was a bad thing!” Tucker said defensively. “It’s just…”

“You haven’t talked to anyone about it, have you?” Simmons asked. And suddenly the reason why Tucker had seemed so wound up lately made perfect sense.

Tucker looked away and shrugged, crossing his arms again. “I’ve talked to  _ Wash.” _

“So like Simmons said, you haven’t talked to anyone,” Grif repeated with amusement. 

Tucker gave him an annoyed look, then sighed. “He’s not  _ easy _ to talk to, that’s for sure.”

“Nope,” Simmons agreed, reaching out and pulling Grif’s tray over to him and stacking it on top of his own. “So what’s up?”

Tucker stared at the table and didn’t say anything for a while. Then he uncrossed his arms and folded them on the table and said, “Locus hurt my team. Like I know him and Doyle had Sarge and Donut as well, but he never...like he targeted Wash  _ specifically. _ And Felix too. He went after me. I got fucking  _ stabbed.  _ They were both such  _ assholes, _ and  _ neither _ of them deserved to walk after what they did. And I don’t  _ care _ if Locus is a ‘changed man’ or whatever. He still needs to pay for what he did. To me and Caboose, Carolina, Wash, _ you guys.  _ All of us.” He leaned forward and fidgeted with the plug in his earlobe before dropping his hand back onto the table. “The only reason I’m onboard with letting him go down to Earth is so he can  _ fix _ all of the shit he put us through. And honestly? I hope it’s  _ hell  _ down there for him, because that’s what he deserves after everything he put us through.” He bit his lip and looked away. “So there. That’s ‘what’s up,’ I guess.”

Simmons stared at him, surprised that Tucker had actually opened up to him and Grif. Especially considering that literally  _ no one _ on Blue Team seemed to have a very good track record with talking about their feelings. But at least they had gotten something out of him, and by the sound of it, Tucker had needed someone to talk to. “Well...I mean…” Simmons looked over at Grif, who looked equally as surprised as him, then back at Tucker. “I guess that’s all fair. But have you... _ tried _ telling Wash any of this?”

“Yeah. Like literally  _ every _ time Locus got more freedom. He’s too stuck in his own head to listen,” Tucker replied bitterly.

“That sounds about right,” Grif replied. 

“It’s good that you’re talking about it though,” Simmons said, getting Tucker’s attention. “I mean, you can’t keep stuff like this bottled up. It’s not good for you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tucker sighed.

“I’m serious!”

“I know,” Tucker said, looking away. 

Grif watched him for a moment, then looked over at Simmons. “Alright. You’re turn.”

Simmons bit his lip, then said, “oh, uh...I...I guess I’ve been feeling a little the same? I mean,  _ we’ve  _ talked.  _ You _ know. Things have just been weird and tense around here. And yeah we all kind of got used to having Locus around, and now he’s being sent to Earth and it doesn’t really feel like there’s a safety net in place and I’m kind of worried about what will happen to Fox.”

“You’re worried about  _ Fox?” _ Grif asked, raising his eyebrows. 

Simmons glanced over at Tucker, who seemed equally as interested. “Well...y-yeah. I mean, she’s been working  _ really _ hard to get Locus to where he’s at. And the fact that people think he’s gonna try to do something bad once he gets to Earth really isn’t helping.”

“Oh,” Grif said, looking a little guilty.

“It’s just a stupid-- Okay yeah it’s not  _ cool _ , but--” Tucker cut off, then sat back and said, “I don’t think anyone really means anything by it, honestly.”

“You put  _ real _ money into it,” Simmons said flatly.

Tucker glanced away, pursing his lips. “Well  _ yeah,  _ but--”

“Dude, drop it. It’s too late to save yourself,” Grif said. 

Tucker opened his mouth to argue, then closed his eyes and sighed and resigned himself to his fate, slouching forward, propping his elbows against the table, and cupping his chin in his hands. “Fine,” he mumbled. “For the record though, I never said Fox would get hurt.”

“I’m not worried about her getting  _ hurt,” _ Simmons replied. “She lost her whole  _ team. _ Aside from us, and Kimball, and Grey,  _ Locus _ is the only other person she has right now, and he’s the  _ only _ person going down there with her. If he does something that makes Kimball have to bring him back here, she could wind up with  _ nobody!” _

“She  _ has _ friends down there, though,” Grif said. “Those two guys, Sachs and Sanchez.”

“Yeah, but did you  _ see _ the profiles for them that Kimball pulled up on that holo-table in her office? They’re super old!”

“So is  _ Sarge,” _ Grif replied, then said, “oh wait. Yeah I see your point.”

“She probably has other friends down there,” Tucker said.

“She’s been in space for like  _ ten years, _ Tucker. No she doesn’t,” Simmons said. “And that’s what sucks. Locus is literally the only person who’s  _ probably _ close to her age that’s going to be down there with her. And if he does something stupid, then she’s gonna have no one.”

“She’s going to be building a team down there, though,” Grif said. “It’s not like she’d be flying solo.”

“Yeah, but we all saw how long it took for her to open up about who she really is to us. She’ll have to do the same thing all over again to  _ them,” _ Simmons said.

Grif scratched his chin, eyes on the ceiling, then he looked back at Simmons and said, “yeah, that would kind of suck. And without Locus, she wouldn’t have anyone she could rely on in a fight either. We’ve all seen how they work together. They’re a fucking nightmare for those pirates. And Fox would get stuck having to work with a bunch of people who she doesn’t know or trust and try to get that synchronization back.” He pulled a face, baring teeth. “It really  _ is _ kind of a shitty situation. I’m glad it’s not  _ my _ problem.”

“What’s worse is that we can’t  _ do _ anything about it,” Simmons sighed, flicking the top of his water bottle and watching as it rocked back and forth a few times before settling again. 

“Pfft, that’s not true. You gotta think outside the box, Simmons,” Tucker declared, sitting up and crossing his arms proudly. 

Simmons gave him a confused look.

“We just gotta put the fear of fucking  _ god _ in him. Let him know what’s waiting for him if he fucks up, y’know?” Tucker continued.

“That sounds like  _ great _ way to get your ass kicked,” Grif replied. 

“Besides, didn’t Fox already do that?” Simmons asked.

“Well,  _ yeah,” _ Tucker said, looking over at him and dropping his shoulders slightly. “But if we  _ all _ ganged up and let him know that we’re not gonna tolerate him giving Fox any shit, then he’ll have more than just her and Kimball to worry about.”

“I mean...that could  _ probably _ work,” Grif said.

Simmons thought about it for a moment. “It’s not like he’d  _ do _ anything to us, right? Not when he’s so close to getting out of here.”

“Exactly!” Tucker exclaimed. “He’s not gonna throw away his odds of getting off of Chorus by clocking one of us.”

“I mean, I don’t wanna start anything with the guy. Mostly because I don’t  _ really _ care, and I kind of think Fox could handle it on her own. But if  _ you _ wanna do it…” Grif said to Tucker.

“Simmons?” Tucker asked, looking over at him.

“Uh, I don’t wanna piss him off. B-but I know Sarge wouldn’t mind helping you!” Simmons suggested. “I mean, he tried to get Fox to join Red Team, so he definitely wouldn’t want anything to happen to her.”

“Huh,” Tucker said thoughtfully. “I guess I’ll have to ask him. Wash and Carolina would probably get in on it too.”

“But please, for the love of god, save it for the day before they leave. If you go out and say something now, especially since we have  _ no idea _ when they’re going to Earth, then it’s gonna be awkward for everyone,” Grif said.

_ “Fine,” _ Tucker huffed and picked his helmet up off of the table and put it on, then grabbed his tray and water bottle and stood. “Well, I’m gonna head to the training room. Wash is probably already there setting up for the lieutenants. I’ll be seeing you guys.”

“Later,” Grif said as Tucker walked past.

“Bye,” Simmons added. He watched Tucker walk away, then looked back at Grif, who had his water bottle in his hands and was tapping on the cap absently. “So what about you?” he asked.

Grif looked up at him, then shrugged. “I’m fine. I’ve just been rolling with everything, I guess. It’s not like fighting any of what’s been going on would work. Besides, like I said two days ago, I really just want Locus gone.”

Simmons nodded silently, staring at the water bottle in Grif’s hands. “Thanks.”

“Mhm,” Grif replied, looking away. 

“Do you wanna head back to the hangar?” Simmons asked. “To keep working on that Pelican Fox wrecked?”

Grif pulled a face. “It’s never gonna fly again.”

“Not with that attitude, it won’t,” Simmons said as he put his helmet back on. He picked up both of their trays and tucked his water bottle under his arm as he stood. “Come on.”

Grif let out a sigh. “Fine,” he said, and stood, brushing a few crumbs off of his chestplate. He grabbed his helmet and put it on, picking his water bottle up. “Lopez probably got his head stuck in the engine again anyways.”

“Then we’d better hurry,” Simmons replied, feeling a small smile spread across his face under his helmet. He jerked his head in the direction of the exit and started walking. “Come on.”

“Right behind you,” Grif said, and followed him.

 

* * *

 

Sticking the pirates in separate cells in full power armor had seemed like a terrible plan to Doc. Of course he had kept it to himself because Doctor Grey was both scary and smarter than everyone else, so who was he to question her logic? 

He thought about this as he ran a quick scan of one of the pirate’s vitals. The pirate’s name was Timothy Pier, as he had stated at the beginning of Grey’s interrogation with him. He was the sniper that put a number of Kimball’s men in the medbay during the first fight with the pirates. Apparently he had run into Locus and survived. Doc wasn’t impressed.

Pier certainly wasn’t as talkative as he usually was today, however, and  _ that _ made Doc curious. In fact, the pirate seemed to be incredibly withdrawn, refusing even the smalltalk that he had proven to enjoy over the past week or so. 

“Are you feeling unwell? Tongue swollen? Throat hurt?” Doc asked.

Behind Pier, the two guards that had accompanied Doc down to let him into the pirate’s cell for his daily check-up exchanged a look. 

“I’m not sick,” Pier replied, sounding almost uneasy.

“Well, you’re certainly not feeling  _ yourself _ ,” Doc said, walking back around in front of Pier and facing him. “Is there something you want to talk about?” The stress of being kept in a cell could be the reason for his silence, Doc thought. That, or there was something else going on. Either way, Doc reasoned, the best way to deal with it was to talk about it.

“I…” Pier stopped and looked away.

“Oh, come on, don’t be shy. It’s just  _ me! _ I’m everyone’s friend! Unless you’re trying to kill me, obviously...and you’re not Agent Washington,” Doc said.

Pier seemed to contemplate this, then let out a sigh and said, “about an hour ago, I received a transmission from Control.”

Doc nearly dropped his datapad. “You  _ what?! _ ”

“An hour ago--”

“No, I heard you! But  _ what?!” _

“They said they were departing from the station they were docked at when they hired us in the next few hours, and that they want us to establish a base at the old Charon research facility up in the mountains and would contact us once they reach the Sol system,” Pier replied.

Doc stared at him, then looked back over his shoulder at the guards behind him and squeaked out, “could you get Doctor Grey down here, please?”

And Grey was down in an instant once she was called. Grey shooed Doc out of the way and rounded on Pier, who was trying to make himself look as small as possible in the corner. “ _ What _ did Control tell you?”

And Pier, in a very small voice, repeated everything he had told Doc. When he was finished, Grey looked troubled. “And what system were they docked at?” she asked.

“The Zeta Doradus system, ma’am.”

Grey turned her gaze to the floor. “That explains why repairs took so long, at least. They must have entered slipspace after we rescued the Reds and Blues and done more damage to their engines than we initially thought,” she mused, and turned to Doc, narrowed her eyes at him in thought, then looked back at Pier. “And do they know that you’re being held captive?”

“N-no ma’am! Didn’t tell them nothin’! Just gave them a ‘yessir’ and called it even,” Pier replied.

“Good,” Grey said, her voice sweet, but Doc could detect a hint of venom in her tone. “I’m going to need your helmet.”

Pier quickly took it off and handed it to her, stepping back quickly when she took it from him.

Grey tucked it under her arm, then turned on her heel and stepped out of the cell, saying, “Doc, sweetie, follow me. We need to get this information to Kimball,  _ stat. _ ”

“Uh- Yes ma’am!” Doc exclaimed, glancing back at Pier and giving him a flimsy salute before he ducked out of the cell and hurried after Grey.

 

* * *

 

“Well, that was the most irritating, time-consuming, and stressful thing I’ve ever done, but I’m glad it’s over,” Kimball sighed. It had been nearly a week since she decided to send Fox and Locus to Earth, and the process of getting the former registered and approved by the U.N.S.C. was finally,  _ finally,  _ over.

“You and me both,” Sachs replied with a grin. “Now all that’s left to do is let Pepper know.”

Kimball nodded up at the overhead monitor, a thought suddenly occurring to her. “She’ll get through the checkpoint at Chawla, but what about Locus?”

“Pep sent me his information a few days ago. I looked over it. He should be able to get through just fine. None of that Charon mumbo jumbo is actually on his record, since Hargrove hired him off the books.”

“I figured as much,” Kimball said, relieved. The last thing she needed was for their operation to get blown the second it started. 

“Speaking of off the books, I know you told me about your plan for that ship Hargrove has,” Sachs said. “I didn’t say anything about it to anyone, and as far as anyone knows, it was a system malfunction.”

“Thank you,” Kimball said. “We’re still working on pinpointing the ship, but as soon as we do, I’ll let you know.”

“That’ll do,” Sachs replied, taking a sip of his coffee before placing it back on the table he was seated at. “Just as long as you don’t tie it to yourselves in any way, the U.N.S.C. won’t make a fuss. So no ‘Chorus sends her regards’ in all-caps across their computer screens, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Kimball repeated, amused. Then she asked, “do you have anything else for me? Or are we all set?”

“Well, nothing regarding the U.N.S.C. and all that business, but Sanchez did want me to tell you that the warehouse he mentioned he was getting set up is almost done.”

Kimball blinked, surprised. “That was fast.”

“Man has a long list of people who owe him favors,” Sachs replied with a grin. 

“I see,” Kimball said. “Anything else?”

“No ma’am. I reckon that warehouse should be done in a few days though. I’ll give you a ring when he finishes,” Sachs replied.

“I would appreciate that,” Kimball said with a nod.

“Other than that, though…” Sachs shook his head. “So I’ll let you go, then.”

“Thank you for your help,” Kimball said. 

“Not a problem,” Sachs said, then signed off.

Kimball rolled her shoulders and leaned back slightly, then turned on her heel and started towards the lab doors. She needed to find Fox. 

She barely made it through the door when she nearly ran into the other woman, who quickly dodged out of the way, exclaiming “oh jeeze I’m sorry! I didn’t realize you were done!”

Kimball stepped back, looking at her in confusion. “Was there something you needed to discuss with General Sachs and I?”

“Oh,” Fox said, perking up, “no. Uh. Actually I was just gonna give you this.” She held up the travel mug in her hand. Kimball noticed that there was a bag of sugar and cream packets taped to the side of it. “I don’t know how you like it, so I kind of just...grabbed one of everything,” Fox said, handing the mug over.

“I...don’t know what to say,” Kimball said, taking it from her, and wondering how the other woman knew she had forgotten her coffee in her office.

Fox shrugged. “I just saw you didn’t have any when you came into the lab twenty minutes ago, so I ran and got you some.”

Oh. Duh.

“Well, I appreciate it,” Kimball said, taking a sip of the coffee.

“I guess I could have left all that sugar and stuff upstairs, huh?” Fox asked, amused.

“I only drink it black when I’ve had less than five hours of sleep,” Kimball admitted.

“Huh,” Fox said. 

“I was actually about to go looking for you,” Kimball said. “General Sachs and I just finished the process of running everything by the U.N.S.C.”

“Oh good. How’d that work out?”

“Everything has been approved, but they’re going to keep a close eye on you, especially since your ranking of lieutenant colonel came out of nowhere.”

“I sort of figured,” Fox said. “It won’t be a problem, though. I was planning on playing it safe. At least until they got comfortable with us being there.”

Kimball nodded. “Good. I want you to--” She cut off as the elevator doors down the hall slid open and Grey and Doc came rushing out. “Hold on.”

Fox turned and caught sight of the two, tilting her head slightly. “Grey? Are you guys okay-- Is that a helmet?”

“We’re fine. There’s no danger.  _ Yes _ that is a helmet. Take it,” Grey replied breathlessly, shoving the helmet into Fox’s hands before turning to Kimball. “Pier. That sniper that Locus brought back. He received a broadcast from Control an hour ago.”

Fox immediately perked up, and she darted into the lab, shouting, “we can triangulate the ship’s position!”

Kimball stared after her, then looked back at Grey. “Is that true?”

Grey opened her mouth to reply, but stopped when a loud clang, like one of the large metal storage shelves, had fallen over. 

“I’M OKAY!” Fox shouted back. “JUST REALLY SHORT AND KINDA CLUMSY!”

“I’ll go help her,” Doc offered, and hurried into the lab.

Grey shook her head and sighed, looking back at Kimball. “Yes. The transmission data is stored for up to forty-eight hours afterwards for logging purposes. So we’ll need to work fast.” She jerked her head at the lab door, and stepped through.

Kimball followed her back to the quantum computer, where Fox had already gotten set up. The helmet sat next to the keyboard with a number of conversion cables hooked up to it in a line, which ended in a USB that was plugged into the computer itself. A few feet away, one of the shelves that had been pushed against a cement pillar had been knocked over.

“I  _ just _ organized all of those boxes,” Grey said mournfully, shaking her head at the mess.

“Sorry. The cables to hook up this helmet were in one of the top boxes, and I couldn’t find the stepping stool,” Fox replied, not away from the monitor. 

“So you just launched yourself at the shelf?”

“I tried to climb it, but power armor is heavy, and those shelves are pretty flimsy in comparison. So...gravity happened,” Fox said, this time glancing back at her. “Just leave it. I’ll clean it up once I finish with this.”

“What do you two need?” Kimball asked, looking at her and then to Grey.

Grey thought for a minute, then replied, “fuel for the backup generators, and people waiting to pump it. Simmons, Jensen, and a few others near that satellite ready to go in case it decides to act up. Ventilation cranked up as high as it’ll go. We’ve got fire extinguishers, so cross that off the list.” She looked over at Fox. “What else?”

“Everyone down here  _ needs _ to be in power armor to regulate their body temperatures for them. When we ran the benchmark, it got over ninety, and we can’t have anyone sweating because moisture and computers don’t mix.  _ Especially _ this computer,” Fox replied. “Also if anyone has any fans. Like desktop fans or whatever, have them grab them and bring them this way. Also a team to be ready in case something  _ does _ catch on fire, so we can put it out immediately.” She paused and looked back at Kimball. “And a plan. I need to know exactly where we’re going to hit this thing once we’re locked on, because this whole thing is super time sensitive.”

“I’ve got blueprints!” Grey exclaimed.

“From that broadcast Epsilon made? You were able to find some?” Fox asked, watching as Grey darted to the workbench a few feet away and opened her laptop.

“I didn’t hear anything about this,” Kimball said, surprised. 

“I got the idea at three A-M this morning,” Grey said. “You were asleep.”

“Ah.”

“Uh, Doctor Grey, is there any way I can help...or…?” Doc asked, speaking up from beside the computer.

“You can go back up to the med-bay and help run things up there,” Grey replied. “I’ll let you know if I need anything.”

“Okay,” Doc said, turning to go. Then he paused and quickly added, “good luck!” before he hurried out of the room.

Kimball watched him go, then looked over as Grey brought her laptop over and set it on the other side of the quantum computer’s keyboard. Grey looked up and waved her over before turning back to the screen. Kimball walked over, eyes on the blueprints Grey had pulled up. “Fox, what do you think?” she asked. “The two of you are better with this sort of thing than I am.”

“Well,” Fox began, “we need to play it like a system failure. So I say we start small, and then work our way up.”

“We could take out their navigation systems as a start,” Grey suggested. 

“Hmm...I was thinking more like a chain reaction sort of deal,” Fox replied.

Grey was silent for a moment, and looked back at the blueprints. “We could go after the temperature controls. Then make it look like the heat caused everything else to fail.”

“They’ve got some pretty expensive and sensitive machinery in that ship, so that could definitely work,” Fox replied with a nod.

“We could also mess with their reactor a bit,” Grey added. “If it overheated as well, it would stop them from trying to enter slipspace.”

“And we could cut their thrusters, so they can’t move and mess up our signal,” Fox said, opening a text document and starting to type up their plan. “Okay, so first, we get in through a backdoor in the reactor’s protocols, because it’s the last place they would look, and Locus and I sort of decided on that as our way in  _ anyways. _ And I’d hate to have to have to rewrite a bunch of code last minute.  _ Then _ we cut their thrusters, and start fucking with their reactor, and disable their transmissions so they get stuck out in open space.”

“That’ll also buy us some time for anything else we plan on doing,” Grey said with an approving nod.

“After that, we turn up the heat, disable their evacuation protocols, then give them back their reactor and thrusters so they can get back to port, and wreck their slipspace drive,” Fox finished. “How’s that?”

“Playing with that reactor could be risky,” Kimball warned. One wrong move and the ship could be destroyed. 

“I’m not going to overload it or anything, just initiate their emergency protocols,” Fox explained looking over at Grey. “Mostly to cause panic and divert attention.”

“Fair enough,” Grey replied.

“Just as long as you don’t blow up the ship, you can do whatever you like,” Kimball said, “but don’t take any unnecessary risks.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Fox said. “I think this is a solid plan, but if you have any suggestions…”

Kimball looked over at Grey, who shook her head. 

“The plan is good,” Grey said.

“Which of you is going to be running this thing?” Kimball asked.

“Fox,” Grey said. “I’m good with these sorts of things, but she grew up alongside the U.N.S.C.’s largest metastabilized AI and knows all of the works. And she knows Charon. I’d rather her do it than me.”

“Aw, you just hate the idea of being stuck at a computer all day,” Fox said, looking over at Grey with amusement.

“That too,” Grey added with a cheeky smile. 

Kimball looked over at the monitor when the program that had been running since she and Grey stepped into the lab finished and pulled up a new window.

Fox typed in a few things and pulled up a few new windows, then declared, “I’ve got a lock on the signal. It...looks like...the ship is docked at the  _ Aria _ station.”

“Pier was right,” Grey said with a nod. “It’s in the Zeta Dorado System.”

“Kimball?” Fox asked, looking over her shoulder at her.

Kimball took a deep breath, then reached up and hovered two fingers over the comm in her ear. “Remind me what you need again so I can broadcast it out, and then we can get started.”

 

* * *

 

“Simmons, Lopez, Jensen, Bitters, and Sarge, the five of you are with Grey. You’ll be on standby near the satellite. Agent Carolina, you’ll be taking the remaining lieutenants to the backup generators to remain on standby until notified. Agent Washington, Donut, Caboose, Tucker, and Grif, the five of you are to remain here and assist as necessary. In the event that the computer should overheat and a fire be started, you’ll be in charge of putting it out.”

Fox listened as Kimball rattled off orders to the men who had gathered in the lab, and watched out of the corner of her eye as the majority of them headed back into the hall to go to their stations. She  let out a long breath and stared at the holographic monitor above the keyboard. Just minutes ago, she had locked onto one of  _ The Staff of Charon’s _ computers. The ship was still docked, but judging by all the activity on the servers, it would launch within the next hour. They had to move quickly, as their odds of successfully pulling off the plan would drop to near-zero if the ship went into slipspace. 

Fox watched the compiler Locus had created do its job; creating a backdoor in the ship’s system so she could access the servers and connect to the network, ultimately taking control of the ship. All things that were easier said than done, of course. 

“So exactly what is this thing going to do?” Donut asked from where he was seated on the floor by one of the cement pillars.

Fox looked over at him, then turned back to the screen. “So what I’m doing right now is compiling the source code for the program that monitors the filtration levels in the ship’s reactor cooldown system,” she explained. “Then I’m going to add a rootkit to it, and run it, creating an access point for me to start messing their shit up.”

“You couldn’t have chosen something a little less important?” Grif asked, hooking up and turning on the last of the fans that had been brought down to the lab per Kimball’s request.

“The filter monitor isn’t the thing that stops the reactor from having a meltdown,” Fox replied. “It just makes sure that there isn’t like, sulfur or some shit in the water.”

“So…” Tucker spoke up. “Is this it?”

“Yup,” Fox replied.

“You’re...you’re hacking a space ship right now?”

“Uh- _ huh.” _

“I thought this would be more...intense.”

Fox couldn’t help but laugh at that. She stole a glance at Locus, who met her gaze evenly, then she replied, “it’s not like the hacking that you see in Hollywood films, guys.”

“The majority of it is just like this,” Locus added, crossing his arms and leaning back against the side of the computer.

“So this whole time that I thought you were a hardcore computer hacker, you just sat there with a cup of coffee and hit a few keys?” Tucker asked incredulously. 

Fox didn’t need to look back to know that Wash had buried his face in his hands. 

“Aw, we should’ve brought snacks,” Caboose said.

“Not like we’d be able to eat them,” Grif said from where he was seated cross-legged next to Donut. 

“The safety measures are in place for a reason,” Kimball reminded him.

“And that reason is it’s about to get hot. In.  _ Here!” _ Donut exclaimed.

Fox looked up as a tone notified her that the compiler had finished. “You have that data chip with the kill code?” she asked, looking over at Locus

Instead of responding, he handed the data chip he was holding to her. 

Fox plugged it in. “Awesome. We’ll just wait for the ship’s system to refresh that program and run it again, and then we’ll be in.” She turned back towards where the others had gathered, her eyes finding Tucker. “If you want entertainment, I’d advise you stick around for this next part. Things are going to get interesting.”

 

* * *

 

Somewhere deep within the confines of  _ The Staff of Charon’s  _ system, an AI stirred. She examined her logs, locating a security breach within one of the system’s protocols; a program that monitored the filtration system of the ship’s reactor. Digging deeper, she was able to pinpoint the source of the attack; a base within the jungles of Chorus. For her, time flowed at a fraction of a second, her processing speed a thousand times faster than that of any human mind. And no human would be able to measure the speed at which she decided to ignore the threat. The chairman had cut her off when she was trying to help her friends . Her  _ director. _ So today she was going to have a glitch in her system, and not send out an alert that they were under attack.

It only seemed fair.

 

* * *

 

“Alright, so, bad news and good news,” Fox said, peering at the projected screen. “We might have been detected by the onboard AI.”

“And the good news?” Locus asked, silently hoping that she was about to tell them that she could shut it down, or  _ something. _

“It’s not doing anything.”

“It’s  Sheila !”

Locus looked over when he heard Caboose cry out in excitement.

“Can she see us?” Caboose asked, then, without waiting for Fox’s answer, started waving at the overhead monitor, shouting, “hi Sheila!”

“Caboose, no. I’m sorry, she can’t hear you,” Fox said, looking back at him, her voice heavy with sympathy. 

“Oh,” Caboose said sullenly.

“But at least she’s okay, right?” Fox added.

“Yeah,” Caboose said, sounding a little happier.

“Kind of surprising she’s still alive though,” Tucker said. “After what she did to help us.”

“If you think Hargrove is gonna throw away an AI just because it malfunctioned, then you must have been in a  _ coma _ while we were on Nalome,” Fox said flatly. Then added, “at least she’s not alerting the crew. That’s helpful.”

“You still need to be careful,” Locus warned. Even if the AI  _ was _ friendly, it didn’t mean that Hargrove lacked control over it. 

“I will,” Fox replied, looking back towards the screen. She hit a few things on the keyboard, then said, “Donut, do me the honors and count me down from five.”

“Sure thing!” Donut said, leaping to his feet and giving her a salute. “Five…”

Fox ran the program that had been pulled up once the data chip had been inserted.

“Four…”

A loading bar appeared and shot across the screen.

“Three…”

The overhead monitor flickered several times before settling.

“Two…”

The computer’s fans rose from a dull hum to a heavy whirr.

“One.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are live,” Fox said. Up on the overhead monitor, a network map appeared. Fox zoomed out, and Locus watched as the connections between all the ship’s parts turned from green to blue. 

Locus watched as she located the ship’s primary thrusters and pulled them up onto the projected screen. A series of graphs, bars, and numbers on the bottom right of the screen showed the thrusters’ status. Judging by their values, the ship was about to depart.

“She’s getting ready to launch,” Fox declared. “Once she’s out in open space, I’ll get started. The rest of you might want to grab some chairs or something.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Locus watched the Reds and Blues get comfortable. He opted to simply stay standing, that way if Fox needed something, he could assist her. 

They waited for several minutes, the sound of the computer’s fans, and all the ones that had been brought in filling the space. Finally, Fox began tapping away at the keyboard again, saying, “alright, they’re in a good spot. Looks like they’re about to try to jump into slipspace.” Locus could  _ hear _ the grin in her voice when she said, “how about I ruin their day?”

 

* * *

 

On the bridge, an officer by the name of Larry Stuart was taking a sip of his coffee when a warning flashed across the screen of his control station alerting him that the power to the primary thrusters was dropping. Stuart stared at his screen, then sucked in a pained breath through his nose and swallowed hard when he burned his mouth on his drink. He panted for a few seconds to try to cool off his tongue, scrubbed at his glasses with the hem of his shirt, stuck them back on his face, and peered at the warning. 

That  _ couldn’t _ be right, they’d  _ just _ had repairs done. 

And that was  _ exactly _ what the captain said when he alerted him to the issue. Stuart pointed to his screen, his co-workers around him stealing glances in his direction as he explained the problem to the captain. After a moment, the captain cleared his throat, and got engineering on the line.

 

* * *

 

Up on the overhead monitor, the nodes representing the primary thrusters had turned red. Kimball watched with curiosity as Fox pulled up a window on the screen and typed something into the keyboard. 

“So, for those of you viewing at home, what I’m doing is cutting power to the thrusters, which is making it look like they’re malfunctioning to everyone on the ship,” Fox explained as she typed. “By now they’ll be looking at a delayed jump. They’re still able to enter slipspace, but they need to make sure that the thrusters are okay. And while their attention is drawn elsewhere, I’m going to shift my focus to my point of entry; their lovely little reactor.”

Kimball narrowed her eyes. In the plan that Fox had given to her, the purpose of accessing the reactor was to cause a panic. But it was risky. One wrong move and there would be no justice for  _ anyone _ . Just several hundred tons of debris floating in space. Fox had sounded confident when she explained the plan, and Kimball hoped that confidence matched her skill.

She watched as Fox minimized the window that had pulled up the thrusters, and brought the reactor onto the monitor. It was all Greek to Kimball; the numbers, the commands, the data values in the bottom right corner. But Fox seemed right at home, and in a matter of minutes, several parts of the schematics for the reactor were flashing red on the screen.

“And now,” Fox said, “they start to panic.”

 

* * *

 

Hargrove was in the middle of a call when he received an urgent video transmission from his captain. With a sigh, he informed the man on the end of the line that he would need to call him back, and answered the chat. 

“What is it, captain?”

“Sir, the thrusters aren’t receiving power, and--”

Hargrove didn’t hear the rest of whatever the captain had said, as his words were drowned out by the sound of alarms, and flashing red lights. He jolted in his seat, and looked around, thoroughly taken off-guard by this new situation. “I want a full report,  _ now! _ ” he snapped at the captain, who had a hand pressed to his earpiece like he was receiving news. 

“Like I said, sir, the thrusters aren’t receiving power, and engineering just updated us that the reactor is beginning its emergency protocols.”

Hargrove narrowed his eyes, then swivelled his chair around and stared out the row of floor-to-ceiling windows into the expanse of space, thinking hard. This had to be more than an engineering malfunction. Their ship had just been repaired. They should have  _ caught _ this.

He turned back to where the captain was still being holo-projected on his desk. “Contact  _ Aria _ . We’re bringing the ship back to dock. I’ll be right up.”

“Yessir!”

 

* * *

 

“Hey! That...uh...little box thing is flashing,” Tucker said, pointing up at the node in mention.

Fox glanced back at him, then looked in the direction he was pointing. “Right on schedule,” she said, much to Tucker’s confusion. “They’re trying to contact the station they launched from.”

“That’s bad, right?” Donut asked.

“It is if they manage to reach who they’re trying to contact,” Fox explained. “But they’ll  _ never _ have that chance.”

“You’re... going to cut their transmission and get them stuck with no way to get help!” Tucker exclaimed in realization. He couldn’t help but feel a little impressed. 

“Yup!” Fox replied. 

“I just hope those suckers like strawberries,” Donut giggled, “‘cause they’re about to get  _ jammed! _ ”

“That was  _ terrible,” _ Wash groaned. 

“Not as terrible as Hargrove’s probably feeling right now,” Fox said with a grin in her voice.

 

* * *

 

“Mayday, mayday, mayday,  _ Aria _ Station, carrier six-one-nine-six; power loss to primary thrusters and reactor initiating emergency protocols, requesting permission to dock; spacecraft location…”

Hargrove listened to the captain relay a distress signal to  _ Aria _ Station, eyes scanning over the control stations of the officers on the bridge as he approached. He stopped beside the captain and let him finish his transmission. 

“Engineering is working on the problem, sir,” the captain said when he finished. “We should be hearing back from them in the next few minutes.”

“Why is F.I.L.S.S. not online?”

“We’ve tried pulling her up manually, but she’s not responding,” came the reply from one of the officers.

Hargrove curled his lip. So  _ that’s  _ how it was. First the AI tried to help her little friends when they came aboard his ship, and now she was letting their systems fail. He decided he ought to do something about that once they got this mess sorted out. He was pulled out of his thoughts when the captain repeated the distress transmission. Hargrove looked over at him, eyes narrowed. “Have they not responded?”

The captain looked back at him over his shoulder and shook his head. “No sir.”

“I know why,” came the announcement from a different officer than the one who had spoken before. “We’re being jammed.”

Hargrove looked down at him, the corner of his mouth twitching in frustration. Whoever was toying with them knew what they were doing. 

 

* * *

 

“Alright, primary thrusters offline,  _ check! _ Reactor emergency protocols running,  _ check! _ And radio’s jammed,  _ check! _ ” Fox said cheerfully. 

Wash wondered if this was cathartic for her. 

“Next we have the temperature stabilizers.”

“Why is that on the list?” He couldn’t help but ask. It seemed like such an odd jump to go from the thrusters, to the reactor, to the radio, and then to….the air conditioning?

“Because I wanna make them think there’s a problem where there isn’t one,” Fox replied simply without looking back at him. “Plus heat makes people irritable, and if we can get them at each other’s throats, it’ll buy me some time.”

Well that made...sense. But so far Fox hadn’t run into very many problems. Then again, he didn’t know much about her plans. Wash leaned towards Kimball and quietly asked, “so what comes after she deals with the temperature stabilizers?”

“She’s going to disable the escape vessels,” Kimball replied.

And now Wash was  _ sure _ that this was cathartic for Fox. First she jammed the radios, and now she was screwing with the temperature stabilizers, and next she was going to take away the ship’s escape vessels. It was all psychological. She was just  _ messing _ with Hargrove.

“You know, it’s a shame that Hargrove isn’t from France, otherwise I’d be making a joke about French toast right now,” Fox chuckled. On the overhead monitor, the node for the temperature stabilizers had turned red. 

“Oh, and  _ my _ joke was bad?” Donut huffed.

“It  _ was _ bad,” Tucker replied.

“I thought it was funny!” Caboose declared.

“Can you all shut up?” Grif snapped.

Wash just shook his head and watched as she pulled up the protocols for the escape vessels. In a matter of minutes, there was a warning flashing across the projected screen, alerting that the vessels were offline. Wash couldn’t help but feel a little disturbed, if not impressed. Fox was good, but her methods were definitely unorthodox. It almost,  _ almost _ made him feel sorry for the people onboard.

_ Almost. _

 

* * *

 

_ [Alert: emergency evacuation protocols are now offline. Alert: emergency evacuation protocols are now offline. Alert--] _

“Will  _ someone _ get me an answer about what’s going on!” Hargrove snapped. The evacuation vessels were, obviously, offline, which wouldn’t have been as much of a problem as it was if the ship wasn’t beginning to heat up. 

“Engineering just got back to me, sir; they’ve got the reactor back under control.”

Hargrove looked over at the captain. His relief was short-lived however when the alert system droned;  _ [alert: temperature of primary and secondary engine reaching critical levels.] _

_ Oh, bloody hell. _

_ _

 

* * *

 

A notification flashing across the overhead monitor made Grif’s’ gut twist. “Hey, they took back the reactor,” he said, looking over at Fox.

“It’s fine. They can have it,” she replied without looking up.

“What’s the next step?” Wash asked.

“I’m going to give them back their thrusters, and cut their slipspace drive,” Fox replied. “After that, they get their system back, and we get an opening.”

Grif noted how she looked pointedly back towards Kimball when she said that last part. “But what if the computer overheats before you do that?”

“Then they keep their slipspace drive, and we have a much shorter window.”

“And if it catches on fire?”

“That’s what you guys are for.”

“But what--”

“Grif, it’s going to be  _ fine!” _ Fox exclaimed, looking back at him. “I know what I’m doing. Trust me.”

Grif let out a huff and sat back, crossing his arms. “Fine.”

 

* * *

 

“Thrusters gaining power, sir!”

Hargrove looked over at the officer who had spoken. The reactor was stable, and the thrusters were back, but the engines were still overheating, and their radios were still jammed. And this damned  _ heat _ was going to drive him mad! “I want those radios back online. The sooner they’re up, the sooner we can  _ end _ this mess,” he growled in the direction of the officer who was working on the communication control panel. 

“I’m sorry sir,” the officer replied. “I’ve tried everything! Whatever’s jamming us, it’s--”

_ [Alert: slipspace drive experiencing a critical malfunction. Alert--] _

Hargrove grit his teeth as the overhead voice droned on. This was  _ infuriating! _ Everything he had planned up until the inevitable trial was incredibly time-sensitive. Punctuality was key, but now he was on a time crunch. And the worst part of it was that they couldn’t do anything about it! Letting out a hissing breath between his teeth, Hargrove turned when he felt someone else approaching down the catwalk. His eyes fell on the mercenary he had hired who had met them at the station, her white and grey armor bathed in the red lights of the alarms. 

“Sir,” she said with a nod as she stopped in front of him. 

_ Now this could  _ **_work,_ ** Hargrove thought, a ghost of a smile appearing on his face. “Excellent timing, I was just about to call you to the bridge.”

“Marlowe is struggling to keep the labs under control. He wanted me to tell you,” she said.

_ [Temperature stabilization system back online.] _

Hargrove looked up in the direction of the overhead voice, then looked back at the mercenary with a smile. “Ask and you shall receive,” he said, satisfied that at least  _ that _ was working again. “I actually have a request for you.”

“A change of orders?”

“ _ Precisely, _ ” Hargrove said with a nod, then brushed past her and gestured for her to follow. “As you can see,” he began, leading her through the halls of  _ The Staff of Charon, _ “we won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. Now, as I discussed with you before, you were hired for the purpose of...damage control.”

“And now?” the mercenary asked.

“Don’t be mistaken; the purpose of my hiring you has not changed,” Hargrove said, stepping through the doors of his office and taking a seat behind his desk. He allowed himself to get comfortable before he addressed the mercenary again. “The location of your mission, however,  _ has. _ ” He pulled a data chip out of a drawer on his desk and inserted it into his computer. He then uploaded a folder on his desktop to it, ejected it, and handed it over to the mercenary. “On that drive, I’ve given you some crucial information regarding something known as ‘The Cerberus Protocol.’ There’s an old family friend who may be able to assist you once you arrive whose information is on that drive as well. I would advise you, however, to conduct any meetings with her either in person, or through a means that cannot be traced.”

“Arrive, sir?” 

“On Earth,” Hargrove said, the corners of his mouth raising into a thin-lipped smile. “You’re to take a ship from the hangar, stocked with whatever supplies you may need, and depart towards the Sol System immediately.”

“Yes sir. Anything else?”

“We will arrive behind you as soon as possible, and it would benefit both of us if you were able to get a good head start,” Hargrove said evenly, then added as he waved her off, “I’m certain you’re not as keen to fail as the  _ last _ two mercenaries I hired.”

“No,” the mercenary said, “I’ll do better.” Then she turned and started for the exit, only stopping when Hargrove called out to her again.

“And I would advise bidding Marlowe and that little friend of yours farewell. You won’t be seeing them again for a  _ while. _ ”

The mercenary nodded back at him, then stepped through the doors, leaving Hargrove alone with his fingers laced together, and a smile like a storm on the horizon settled on his face. 

 

* * *

 

“All the ship’s protocols are back online, and all our systems are nominal!” Fox reported. “Great work everyone!”

“Fuck yeah! We kicked their ass! High-five!”

Fox looked over as Donut hopped next to Locus with his arm raised. Like he was expecting to get anything out of him.

“No,” Locus said flatly.

“Aw,  _ come on! _ ”

“I’m not--”

“But  _ teamwork! _ ”

Fox couldn’t help but giggle a bit when Locus let out a resigned sigh and gave Donut the most apathetic high-five she’d ever seen. She looked around and saw the others excitedly congratulating each other, smiling hard under her helmet, breathing deeply to get her heart rate back down. 

“Is Sheila gonna be okay?”

Fox turned to Caboose, who had approached her, looking uncertain. “I...I’m sure your friend is fine. Hargrove probably thinks she just malfunctioned or something. He might have her looked at by a technician or something, but I doubt he’ll hurt her,” she replied, trying her hardest to sound convincing. 

Caboose perked up a little bit at her answer, much to her relief, and said, “okay. I trust you, Miss Fox! ‘Cause you’re really smart.”

“Well, thank you, Caboose,” Fox said, startled into a smile. 

“Should I tell Lopez?”

“About...Sheila?”

“Yeah. He was kind of in love with her. But I was also kind of in love with her too, so...I don’t know if I should tell him,” Caboose said, staring at his feet. 

Well that was...interesting. People forming close relationships with AI’s wasn’t at all uncommon, but being in love with one? Fox decided it wasn’t her place to judge. The universe was a weird place, after all. “You should tell him, Caboose. It’s the right thing to do.”

Caboose looked up at her, then said, “Okay...I’m gonna go do that now. Bye, Miss Fox!” 

Fox watched him leave, aware of Wash doing the same thing before he looked back over at her.

“So what happens now?” he asked, then looked over at Kimball, who had come to stand beside him. Tucker, Donut, and Grif looked over at her as well, awaiting her answer.

Kimball held up a finger to tell him to wait, and Fox noticed that she had a hand to the side of her helmet. She was likely broadcasting news of their victory to the rest of headquarters. After a moment, she let her hand drop and looked back over at Wash. “Now,” she said, “we work on phase two; sending Fox and Locus to Earth.”

“Does this mean we have to help them pack?” Grif asked. 

Fox let out a laugh. “Don’t worry, it’s not nearly as much as what we brought back from Nalome.”

“Good,” Grif huffed.

“So are we gonna have a party or something?” Tucker asked, looking over at Kimball. 

“Ooooh! I can make glitter balloons!” Donut exclaimed, bouncing excitedly. 

“Glitter...balloons?” Kimball asked slowly.

“Yeah, you get a balloon and fill it with glitter, so when it pops, it goes everywhere!” Donut explained.

“We are  _ not _ doing that,” Wash said, an edge of a threat in his voice.

Fox glanced back at Locus, then looked over at Kimball, who met her gaze evenly. “I mean, it’s not like Hargrove is going to send a bunch of pirates our way. He’s got bigger issues to worry about right now,” she shrugged. 

Kimball sighed. “Fine. Donut?”

Donut perked up and looked over at her. “Yeah?”

“I’m putting you in charge of organizing the party, if you want to have one. Just don’t make a mess.”

Donut let out a little squeal, then gave her a bubbly salute, “I won’t let you down!” Then he turned and headed for the lab exit, exclaiming “Tucker, Grif, come on! You can help me with the streamers!”

Grif grumbled something unintelligible, and rose to his feet, plodding after Tucker towards the hallway. 

“Are you going to help?” Fox asked, looking over at Wash.

“What do you think?” Wash asked flatly.

“Gonna go with  _ no.” _

The lab was silent for a moment save for the sound of the computer’s fans powering down, then Kimball cleared her throat. “Well, I’m going to go get a report together to send to General Sachs. I’ll be in my office.” With that, she turned on her heel, and Fox watched her go before looking back at Wash.

“I’m...going to see where Donut, Grif, and Tucker went off to...To make sure they don’t blow something up, I guess,” Wash said, then turned and took his leave.

Fox let out a long sigh, putting her hands on her hips and turning her upper body to look over at Locus, who hadn’t moved. “What are you up to?”

“What do you need help with?” he asked evenly.

Fox shrugged, then faced forwards again, turning her head to look at the shelf she had knocked over while trying to get the cables to connect Pier’s helmet to the computer. “I guess I’d better pick that up before Grey comes down here again.” She looked back at Locus. “Wanna help?”

He sighed and uncrossed his arms. “Just tell me where to start.”

 

* * *

 

“You’re not going to join them?” Carolina asked, looking pointedly down the hall in the direction of the loud music being emitted from the mess hall. 

After their victory against  _ The Staff of Charon, _ Donut had broadcasted news that he was throwing a party to celebrate, and asked his teammates to help set up. They had managed to yank a radio out of one of the unsalvageable Warthogs and hook it up, much to Lopez’s dismay. They had even managed to dig up some beer to pass out.

Carolina had stuck for a while after Wash showed up to overlook preparations and make sure that none of the Reds or Blues came up with any ideas that could potentially start a fire. She had even allowed herself to be goaded into using her grav boots to help tape streamers to the ceiling. Once the party started, however, she figured her time would be best used keeping watch over headquarters. So after a brief conversation with Wash, that involved her insisting he stay and get some rest due to the fact that he hadn’t been sleeping well for the past week, she had made her way out into the hall, where she caught Kimball as she walked past.

Kimball looked back towards the mess hall, then over at Carolina. “Oh. I... have work to do,” she said.

“You can’t take a break for one night?” Carolina asked before she could stop herself.

Kimball sighed. “It’s important. Especially with Fox and Locus leaving soon.”

“Right,” Carolina said, falling silent for a moment. Then she asked, “is it anything I can help with?”

Kimball tilted her head. “I don’t... _ think _ so….Is there something you need, Carolina?”

Carolina sucked in a breath under her helmet. “No. Everything’s fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Carolina said with a nod. 

“I see,” Kimball said.

And the awkward silence was back with a vengeance. Under her helmet, Carolina chewed her bottom lip, trying to think of what to say. “Well, I was going to go patrol outside.”

“By  _ yourself?” _ Kimball asked.

Carolina shrugged. “I’ll be fine on my own.”  _ But if you wanted to come with me, I wouldn’t say no. _

Kimball seemed to scrutinize her for a moment, then sucked her teeth and glanced back over her shoulder. “Let me come with you.”

Carolina took a deep breath. “Are you sure? You said you were busy.”

“I just need to contact Sachs and let him know that we were successful with stalling Hargrove’s ship. Everything else can wait until tomorrow. It’s not like we’re going to be sending Fox and Locus off first thing, anyways. They’ll need to wait a few days until we can get a Condor prepped,” Kimball explained. “If you give me a few minutes, I can meet you by the cave entrance.”

“That’s fine,” Carolina said, unsure if she liked the fluttering feeling in her chest or not. 

Kimball gave her a nod. “I’ll meet you there then.” Then she turned and continued down the hall, leaving Carolina to watch her go.

 

* * *

 

“What are you looking at?”

Carolina turned back away from the mouth of the cave when she heard Kimball’s voice behind her. She watched as the other woman climbed the stairs to reach her, then looked back up at the cave ceiling. “The glowing lichen up there.”

Kimball let out a little laugh, and Carolina looked over to see that she had stopped by her side. “It’s pretty isn’t it?”

“Very,” Carolina replied, then turned her head when Kimball looked her way. She was silent for a moment, then said, “I was just going to walk in the valley.”

“That’s fine,” Kimball said. “You lead.”

Carolina nodded and started forward, feeling the ground transition from dirt and rocks to grass under her boots. Glancing up, she caught sight of Nalome and one of Chorus’ other moons filling the night sky with pale blue light. It was calming, being able to look up and not expect some kind of threat. Carolina realized this was the first time since they’d arrived on Chorus where she felt like there was genuinely no danger. It was odd and a little unsettling, but she hoped that she could grow used to it. 

She walked in silence for a while, listening to the wind against the trees and the sound of Kimball’s footsteps. It wasn’t until they passed one of the large rock structures in the middle of the valley that Carolina got an idea.

“Do you have grav boots?” she asked, turning to Kimball.

“Yes,” Kimball replied slowly. “Why?”

Carolina came to a stop and nodded at the rock structure. “We could get a better view up there.”

Kimball looked up at the rock structure, then over at Carolina. “You want to climb that?” she asked dubiously.

“It won’t be difficult with grav boots,” Carolina said. “But we don’t have to.”

Kimball stared at the rock structure for a moment, then said, “I don’t mind a challenge.” She brushed past Carolina and walked over to the structure, tilting her head back to look up at it.

Carolina joined her and was still for a moment, then she stepped forward to the base of the structure, activated her grave boots, and took a vertical step onto it. She looked over when Kimball put a foot up on the rock as well.

“Race you to the top?” Kimball asked jokingly.

“Only if you’re ready to lose,” Carolina replied.

“Funny,” Kimball said. 

“Count of three?” Carolina asked.

Kimball nodded.

“Alright. One...Two... _ Three!” _ The second she got the word out, Carolina darted up the rock structure. She didn’t look back until she was about halfway up, and saw with surprise that Kimball had vanished. Coming to a stop, Carolina looked back down the rock structure, frowning under her helmet. “Kimball?” she called out.  _ Okay, she  _ **_has_ ** _ to be messing with me, _ Carolina thought. Then,  _ I guess I could let her win. Right? It’s not like anyone’s looking.  _

“I thought you said I was going to lose?”

Carolina froze, then looked back up towards the top of the rock structure. Kimball was in a crouch at the top of it, peering down at her. “What--”

“Home field advantage,” Kimball replied, a smile in her voice. “That, and you stopped.”

“You disappeared,” Carolina replied, walking the rest of the way up the structure and taking Kimball’s hand when she offered it to her. She let Kimball pull her up to the top, looking up at the tree that had grown at the top of the rock as she dusted herself off. 

“So be honest,” Kimball said, prompting Carolina to look over at her, “you let me win, didn’t you?”

“Maybe,” Carolina said.

“Definitely,” Kimball asserted with a nod.

Carolina just shook her head and sat down on the patch of grass that had grown on the flat surface of the rock structure’s top. Kimball did the same, leaning back against the tree and looking up at the stars. The two of them were silent for some time, listening to the wind and watching clouds pass overhead. It was nice, Carolina thought. They had both earned this.

“We’ve come a long way, haven’t we?” Kimball asked suddenly.

Carolina looked over at her. “The Reds and Blues and I haven’t been here very long.”

“No,” Kimball agreed, “but that doesn’t mean anything. You don’t have to be somewhere or do something for very long to grow a lot as a person.”  
“I suppose that’s true,” Carolina replied.

Kimball was silent for a moment, then asked, “what do you plan on doing once all of this is over?”

Carolina let out a long sigh. That was a big question. “I don’t know.”

Kimball nodded. “Neither do I.” She reached up and pulled off her helmet, setting it in the grass beside her and running a hand through her hair. “You get so used to being surrounded by conflict that the second it’s gone, you don’t know what to do with yourself.” She frowned. “I told myself I wouldn’t get like that, but…”

Carolina watched her for a moment, then said, “it’s not something you can control. Don’t blame yourself for it.”

Kimball made a small sound of agreement, then fell silent. 

Carolina looked away, watching the valley below for a while, before she pulled her own helmet off, setting it next to Kimball’s between the two of them. “You could rebuild Armonia,” she suggested.

Kimball looked over at her. “I thought about that. Armonia was the main city for this colony before the war. Once this mess with Charon is over, we could establish headquarters and government offices there again, instead of having everything scattered the way it is now.” She let out a long sigh. “This war really ruined the colony we had set up here. We’ve got a  _ lot _ of work ahead of us.”

Without thinking, Carolina reached over and put her hand over Kimball’s. “But you don’t have to do it all by yourself,” she said, cringing inwardly as she felt the blood rush to her face. 

Kimball stared at their hands, then looked up at Carolina with a tired but grateful expression on her face. “I know. Thank you.”

Carolina forced a smile that she hoped didn’t look as awkward as it felt and pulled her hand away. She didn’t say anything for a while as she waited for the heat in her cheeks to subside. 

Thankfully, Kimball chose to fill the space, saying, “I think I’m going to build a library.”

“Hm?” Carolina asked, looking over at her.

“For Doyle,” Kimball elaborated.

“Oh,” Carolina said. Then with a smile that was much more natural than the previous one, asked, “I’m guessing there’s going to be a Shakespeare section?”

Kimball’s face broke into a grin that looked almost mischievous. “Of course. But there aren’t going to be any  _ actual _ Shakespeare plays in there!”

Carolina couldn’t help it, she cracked up at that. Kimball did the same, and the two of them sat there and laughed.

Kimball wiped a tear out of her eye, saying “I just figure it’s what he would  _ want!” _

Carolina sniffed and rubbed at her eyes with a knuckle. “Well, you’re not  _ wrong.” _

Kimball let out a chuckle, then fell silent, a grin still on her face, and her eyes still sparkling. And when she looked upwards, Carolina could see the stars in them. 

Taking a deep breath, Carolina looked away, clearing her throat. She thought for a moment, then said, “I think I know what I’m going to do after the war.”

Kimball looked over at her in surprise. “Really?”

Carolina nodded, looking back at her. “I’m going to stay and help you rebuild.”

Kimball blinked, speechless. “I-- You know you don’t have to do that.”

“I know.”

“What about the Reds and Blues? What if they decide they don’t want to--”

“They will,” Carolina said quickly. “This place means a lot to them. To  _ all _ of us. I can’t see any of them refusing to help.”

“That...would be amazing, Carolina,” Kimball said. 

“I’ll talk to the others over the next few days and see,” Carolina said.

Kimball gave her a smile. “Thank you.”

Carolina simply nodded, and leaned back against the tree, looking over when she saw Kimball do the same. And they sat there in silence, watching the stars and the moons, with nothing but the wind to disturb them. And Carolina decided, as she looked over at Kimball, that there was no place she would rather be. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAH! G A Y!
> 
> It’s very in-character for Carolina and Kimball to distrust Fox, but I also HATE it when writers pit the female characters against one another. They’ll never be besties, but I don’t want them to be rivals, cuz that’s fuckin dumb and they’re all really cool and goddamnit these girls gotta stick together! (ò_ó)/°
> 
> Writing a slowburn fic is fun until you realize that you can’t make them kiss .5 seconds into the fic.   
> Carolina currently wishes she could launch herself into the fucking sun because how do flirt? hUmAn IntEraCtioN? wHaT???/??   
> Where’s Epsilon to give her shitty dating advice when she needs him?  
> Oh wait.
> 
> Hi F.I.L.S.S.
> 
> The numbers on the side of “The Staff of Charon” are 619-6, in case you’re wondering where I pulled that callsign from. I did a lot of research figuring out how air/spacecraft transmissions worked, so I’m gonna use them.
> 
> Oh Hello Main Antagonist Numero Dos How Are You Today? I Sure Do Hope You Don’t Try To Fuck Shit Up For Our Stupid Trash Duo That’s Being Sent To Earth Real Soon.  
> *coughs*  
> You guys are gonna love her.


	18. Sardines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quick warning on this one for a sorta suicide attempt towards the middle. Don't worry, nothing happens :'D

The days following hacking _The Staff of Charon_ were packed. It had been nearly forty-eight hours, and Tucker realized that he’d probably only spent six of them getting any sleep. If _he_ was doing bad, he could only imagine how Wash was treating himself. At least Fox and Locus were leaving today. With any luck, their departure would give everyone a chance to rest.

Tucker looked up at the Condor that was being prepped as he walked past. It was the same one that Fox and Locus had arrived on Chorus in. How funny the universe worked sometimes, he thought, as he stepped out of the hangar, his legs automatically taking him in the direction where he had last seen Wash. For a moment, Tucker stopped dead in the hallway, trying to remember if he had anything else that needed to be done. When nothing came to mind, he shrugged and turned the corner, and nearly ran into Locus.

Tucker took a hasty step back, more startled by the fact that there had been someone there than by who it was. He hadn’t even heard _footsteps._ “Jesus! Did you have to sneak up on me?”

“I didn’t.”

“You came out of nowhere. I didn’t hear you. That’s called _sneaking_. Read a dictionary.”

Locus just sighed, clearly not looking for an argument, and Tucker noticed the box he had tucked under his arm. It was filled with gardening tools. Tucker remembered Fox had tossed a similar box into one of the Pelicans when she left Nalome. He wondered if the stuff was hers, or if Locus had some kind of hobby that _didn’t_ involve killing people.

 _Speaking of which…_ “Listen, I might have agreed that sending you off was a good idea,” Tucker began, “and I might not really trust Fox that much either. But from what I’ve seen she’s not a completely horrible person. So don’t even _think_ about hurting her, got it?”

“I _won’t.”_ And Locus’ voice was an irate growl.

Tucker sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly, sizing Locus up for a moment before stepping out of his way. “Good.”

Locus watched him for a moment, then turned his head away and stepped past him around the corner, heading for the hangar. Tucker turned and watched him for a moment, unease swimming in his stomach, then he continued walking, his pace just a little quicker than it had been before.

 

* * *

 

“Huh, Locus must have grabbed that last box. How about that?” Fox asked, staring at the now empty corner of the lab Grey had let her use.

Caboose hadn’t even known she’d been _using_ the lab for storage until she led him down to it and asked him to help her load what little she had into the Condor. The Condor she was going to be leaving on. What if she never came back?

He dragged his feet as Fox led him back in the direction of the hangar. Maybe if he went slow enough, then they wouldn’t be able to leave. The others didn’t seem to like Fox that much-- at least that’s what Caboose thought. Or maybe she didn’t like _them_ that much. She never really hung out with them.

 _No. Miss Fox is nice. She helped save us a lot. She’s probably just really shy. Yeah,_ Caboose thought, staring at the floor as he walked.

“Caboose, honey, your legs are longer than mine. You can walk faster than that.”

Caboose looked up at Fox, who had turned to face him, walking backwards. “Sorry. I just really wanna spend time with you, because we didn’t get to hang out really, and I don’t want you to think we’re not friends.”

Fox stopped walking when he said that, and Caboose couldn’t help but feel a little bit triumphant because of it. “We _are_ friends, Caboose!”

“We never really hung out though.”

Fox tilted her head and tapped a finger against the chin of her helmet. “Well that’s because we were always so busy. Maybe when I come back, we could have like a movie night or something? I don’t know.”

Caboose’s shoulders sagged slightly. That wasn’t really the answer he was looking for. “You could stay and _then_ we could hang out,” he suggested.

Fox let out a small sigh. “Caboose…”

“You don’t _have_ to go to Earth right now. You could stay for another day. Or week. Or forever, you know, whatever you want.”

“Caboose.”

“And we could hang out, and play capture the flag, and fight pirates together…”

 _“Caboose.”_ And this time Fox’s voice was just a little firm. She didn’t sound angry though, not like Tucker and Wash got.

“Sorry.”

“It’s not-- Look, I like you guys a lot. But going to Earth is our best bet to stop Hargrove from hurting more people,” Fox said. “I know I’m your friend, but all these people...aren’t they your friends too?”

“Yeah. Though sometimes they yell at me.”

“So don’t you want them to not get hurt?”

Caboose frowned under his helmet. He _didn’t_ want his friends to get hurt. But he also didn’t want another one of his friends to leave to _stop_ them from getting hurt. Not again. Not like Church. “What if you don’t come back?”

And Fox’s shoulders sank a little when he said that. “I’m coming back,” she said.

Caboose met her gaze. “Promise?”

“I promise, Caboose. Cross my heart.”

And Caboose grinned under his helmet, because you couldn’t break a promise. “Okay!”

Fox chuckled, putting her hands on her hips and shaking her head. Then she straightened out and said, “it’s getting close to being time. Why don’t you do me a favor and round up all the others and bring them to the tarmac so I don’t forget to say goodbye to any of them before we leave?”

Right. It wouldn’t be fair for _him_ to get to say goodbye, but not the rest of his teammates. They were her friends too! “Okay!” Caboose exclaimed, eager for the job. “I’ll be right back!” He turned and headed down the adjacent hallway. Wash had been by the big computer back in the lab. That was a good place to start.

 

* * *

 

Wash had been tasked with setting up a communication channel for Fox and Locus to use once they reached Earth. Normally, this sort of thing would be Grey or Simmons’ job, but both of them had been busy, and Wash hadn’t had the energy to go looking for anyone else. He went through the steps, then double-checked to make sure that everything looked the way that it should. Once he was sure the channel would work, he stepped away from the computer, took off his helmet, grabbed the coffee he had brought with him, and sucked the now room-temperature drink down. Setting the mug back down on a workbench, he leaned up against the wall and ran a hand through his hair. Forty-eight hours was nothing compared to the number of sleepless nights he’d endured in the early wake of Project Freelancer, but with all the work that he’d done over the past two days, he was exhausted.

His tired eyes slid over when he saw teal in the corner of his vision. Tucker. With a sigh, he pushed off the wall to stand upright, and grabbed his helmet, but Tucker reached him before he could put it on.

“Jesus _fuck_ you look like shit.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m just _saying_.”

Wash let out another sigh. “What do you want, Tucker?”

Tucker jerked back at that. “I just wanted to see how you were doing? Is that a problem?”

Wash peered at him. Tucker had been acting strange recently. Ever since the fight on _The Staff of Charon_ he had been more concerned for...pretty much everyone’s well being. It made Wash wonder if it was part of how he was handling the loss of Epsilon. “I’m doing the same as usual. Actually, I was about to go talk to Locus.”

“Dude, don’t worry, already took care of it,” Tucker said, waving a hand.

“What?”

“Told him if he hurt Fox, we’d kick his ass.”

Wash blinked. “And he didn’t stab you?”

“No? Not like he could without everyone else dogpiling him.”

Fair point. “I had something different to say to him,” Wash said. “You ran into him. Where was he?”

“Headed into the hangar,” Tucker said, jerking a thumb back over his shoulder. “They’re about to move the ship out onto the tarmac, looked like.”

Right. Then he needed to get moving. “I’m going to head over that way. Why don’t you--”

“Agent Washingtub! Tucker! Fox wants us to meet her out on the tarmac!”

Wash sucked in a deep breath. “Hello, Caboose,” he said tightly, having been taken off guard by the other man.

“Hi!” Caboose waved at him from across the lab. “We gotta go!”

“Okay, okay, we’re going, Caboose!” Tucker said, sounding frustrated.

“Okay! I’m gonna go find the others!”

Wash watched Caboose step out of the lab and take off down the hall, exhaling slowly. Tucker looked back at him as he put on his helmet.

“You cool?”

“Yeah,” Wash said with a nod. “Let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

Kimball sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly, fingers tapping anxiously against the travel mug in her hand. Today was the big day. Moments ago she had received word that they had begun the process of moving the Condor out onto the tarmac. It was remarkable how a simple notification could make her feel so nauseous. But she’d made her choice, and it was far too late to go back on it now. She looked up when the elevator she was in let out a chime, and as the doors opened, she found herself face-to-face with Carolina.

“Kimball,” Carolina greeted with a nod, stepping back to allow Kimball out of the elevator.

Kimball nodded back, saying “the Condor is being moved out to the tarmac. Meet us out there when you’re ready.”

“Actually, I was just looking for you,” Carolina replied.

Kimball tilted her head slightly. “Did you need something?”

“I wanted to see how you were doing.”

Kimball stared for a moment before clearing her throat. She glanced down the hall ahead, then looked back at Carolina and said “walk with me,” before starting on her way. She was silent for a few minutes as they made their way through headquarters before finally speaking up. “I’m worried. It’s stupid. I _know_ Fox should be able to get things done, but…”

“You have every reason to be concerned,” Carolina replied. “This is the first time you’ve done something like this. We’re all worried.”

Kimball looked over at her. “I just wish...I wish I could look into the future somehow and see how everything turns out. When Fox and Locus first got here...I _never_ would have considered this sort of thing, _especially_ with Locus involved.”

“Fox has proven to be mostly reliable,” Carolina said.

“I know,” Kimball sighed. “It’s _Locus_ I’m worried about. I know that he’s...different from what he was before, and I know that General Sachs and Captain Sanchez plan to keep an eye on him, but still.”

“I don’t think any of us will ever be able to trust him,” Carolina said, looking forwards. “So we have to be able to trust Fox instead. And I think that the first few weeks that they’re on Earth will prove whether or not we can do that.”

Kimball nodded silently. “What do you think?”

Carolina looked over at her in silent thought for a moment before replying “I think that Fox is...eccentric, and a little unpredictable, but sincere. And I think that she’s going to try her hardest to help us.”

Kimball frowned under her helmet. “Carolina, I’m giving you permission to speak freely here. You don’t need to give me a diplomatic response.”

“I know,” Carolina replied evenly. “I didn’t.”

And Kimball bit her lip, wishing that Carolina’s words were enough to make her feel better. “I see,” she said, slowing to a stop as she reached the entrance to the hangar. She stared at the doors for a moment, anxiety creeping up her throat, then jumped slightly when she felt a hand on her shoulder, looking over at Carolina in surprise.

Carolina met her gaze, keeping her hand on Kimball’s shoulder. “No matter what happens, we’re going to get through it together, alright?”

And Kimball swallowed hard and nodded, a small wave of relief washing over her as she felt the knot in her chest loosen. “Thank you,” she said.

Carolina just gave her shoulder a light squeeze before dropping her hand back to her side and nodding at the hangar doors. “After you.”

Kimball let out a long sigh and said “well, here we go,” then stepped through.

 

* * *

 

Tucker hadn’t been the first person to threaten Locus if he hurt Fox. Prior to running into him, Locus had gotten an earful from half of Red Team _and_ Doctor Grey. He knew it was well-deserved, but that didn’t stop it from being remarkably exasperating.

Locus opted to keep his head down as he headed out towards the Condor, the last of his things thrown into a duffel bag over his shoulder. Fox was already at the ship, going over some last minute things with Lopez, by the look of it. He was halfway across the tarmac when he heard his name being called out.

 _Of course,_ he thought when he turned and saw Wash walking towards him. A little ways behind him, Tucker had stopped to talk to a few of Kimball’s men, but Locus noticed how he kept glancing his way.

Wash stopped short of him, drawing himself up for whatever he had to say.

“I know,” Locus said exasperatedly before Wash had the chance to speak. “If I hurt her, you’ll kill me.”

“Actually, that’s not what I wanted to say,” Wash replied, squaring his shoulders.

Locus tilted his head to the side, caught off guard. “Then what?” he asked.

Wash let out a long sigh and looked away before speaking. “Fox...has a lot of faith in you. She seems to think that you have the potential to try to fix what you did.” He turned his head back towards Locus, and said, “she’s put a lot of effort into getting you two to this point. And there’s a lot of trust she’s placing in you by letting you come along. So don’t let her down.”

Locus stared at him, the resentment that had been creeping up his throat like bile suddenly dissolved. That was it? _That’s_ what he was concerned about? That Fox would be let down? It was strange, but Locus chose not to question it. The longer he remained in Wash’s presence, the more tense he grew, so he said, “I won’t,” hoping the other Marine would take the hint.

Wash nodded, seeming satisfied, and then leaned out to the right so he could wave past Locus to Fox, before he straightened up. “I hope so.”

Locus looked at Fox, then back to Wash. Sensing their conversation was over, he turned and headed towards his partner. By now, Lopez had left her side to join the rest of his teammates, so she was alone when he approached her.

“Do we have everything?” he asked.

“Yup! Ship is prepped and stocked. We’ve got our weapons and ammo. We’re good to go,” Fox replied. She looked over towards where the Reds and Blues had gathered, and Locus did the same, realizing with surprise that Kimball and her men had joined them.

Fox let out a soft sigh and looked back towards him. “I should go say goodbye. Wanna join me...or….?”

Locus chose not to reply.

“Yeah, good point. It’d probably be awkward anyways,” Fox said.

And Locus watched as she walked down the ramp and headed across the tarmac to meet them.

 

* * *

 

The Reds, Blues, Kimball, and her men had gathered in a cluster a safe distance from the Condor, and they all seemed to perk up a bit when Fox approached them. It surprised her a little, as she hadn’t expected them all to come see her off, but it was certainly welcome.

“So, it’s time,” she said, stopping in front of them all. “I...really can’t thank you enough.”

“We wouldn’t have gotten as far as we have if it weren’t for you,” Carolina said, and Fox looked over at her in surprise.

“It’s true!” Donut piped up.

“Jesus, I’m gonna miss all of you,” Fox sighed, feeling a hard lump forming in her throat.

“Likewise,” Sarge said. “Yer part of the team, like it or not!”

And Fox felt her eyes fill up, and said, “thank you, all of you. Really. You guys have been so great,” as she went around and gave them all hugs.

“I’m gonna really miss you,” Caboose said, and Fox was sure he was crying.

“Aww, I’m gonna miss you too, Caboose. But I’m coming back. I promise,” Fox replied, patting him on the helmet when he leaned down to hug her.

“You be safe out there, y’hear?” Sarge said when she got to him. “And kick those filthy Charon scumbags’ asses for us!”

“They won’t know what hit them!” Fox promised.

“But be careful!” Doc insisted.

“I’ll try,” Fox replied.

“And if you ever need help with some technical nonsense, I’m always ready to help,” Grey told her, her voice wobbly.

Fox hugged her tightly. “I’ll take you up on that. Hell, I might even just call you for the heck of it.”

“I wouldn’t mind that,” Grey said, pulling away with a sniffle.

“Are you two the hugging sort? I can’t tell,” she asked when she got to Wash and Carolina. Carolina didn’t say anything, but stuck out her hand to shake. Fox took it, glancing over when Wash reached out and patted her shoulder.

When they both pulled back, Fox looked over at Kimball, who appeared hesitant, and offered her a handshake, grinning under her helmet when Kimball accepted. “I won’t let you down,” she said, clasping Kimball’s hand in both of hers for a moment before letting go.

Kimball simply nodded.

“Be careful out there,” Wash said as Fox stepped back from all of them. Then to her surprise added, _“both_ of you.”

Fox stole a glance back towards Locus, who was waiting on the ramp into the Condor. “We will,” she replied, starting towards the ship, waving over her shoulder at the others. When she reached the Condor, she stopped and turned and shouted, “thank you guys! We’ll see you again soon! Stay safe!” Then to Locus, said, “let’s rock and roll.”

She headed up to the cockpit, fighting to breathe past the lump in her throat as she watched the Reds, Blues, and all of the Chorusans spread out on the tarmac to wave goodbye. They were good people, and though she knew that going to Earth was the right choice for everyone, she wished she’d had more time with all of them.

Taking a seat at the controls, she closed the Condor’s liftgate and powered the ship up, glancing over as Locus took the co-pilot seat.

“Alright, Condor delta three-one-seven, you are cleared for takeoff, over,” came the transmission from the command center.

“Roger that,” Fox replied, and powered up the thrusters. Then, more to herself than anything said, “here we go.”

 

* * *

 

Locus watched as they flew past the dust-colored shape of Nalome while Fox navigated them skillfully through the asteroid ring towards open space. None of it felt real. CORA, the fights with the pirates, being partnered with Fox, the fact that he was in a spaceship headed for Earth. But it was.

He turned back to Fox, who had been sniffling periodically. He wondered if she had really gotten that close to the Reds and Blues in such a short time. Looking back out of the cockpit window, he noticed that they were almost clear of the asteroid ring. Open space lied ahead of them, and with it, a few hours in slipspace. He should have brought something to do.

“You ready for this?”

“Slipspace drive is at one hundred percent,” Locus replied.

Fox let out a laugh that caused him to look over at her. “No, no. I meant, are you ready for _Earth?”_

That was a good question. One Locus wasn’t sure he had an answer to. “We’ll see.”

“You from there?”

Locus looked away. “Yes.”

“Really? Where from?”

Did they really have to do this now? “Does it matter?”

“Because we’re going to be there for a while, and if you have stuff somewhere, I could get someone to send it to the safehouse in Boston,” Fox replied, looking over at him.

Right. The safehouse. “Veracruz,” Locus replied. “Moved north after the war.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Fox nodding. “Where to?”

“Cambridge, Massachusetts.”

“Why’s that?”

“It was somewhere familiar.”

Fox looked over at him again. “No way. Do not be about to tell me that you went to M.I.T.”

“...Yes.”

Fox threw her head back in a laugh. “Are you fucking kidding me? Seriously?! Dude, that’s awesome!”

Locus unwound himself a little bit. He hadn’t been expecting a positive response.

“I went to Harvard. Fucking hated it.”

“You studied law?”

“Pfft, _no._ They have one of the best medical programs in the States! Of course, I went there for business originally, but after some stuff changed in my life, I decided I was better suited for biomechanical engineering,” Fox explained. “I stayed in Boston, so I’ll just let you borrow my car to go get your stuff once we get to the safehouse. No point in owing someone a favor later when you can do it yourself.”

Fair enough, Locus thought, a little surprised at the notion of Fox lending him a car. He didn’t dwell on it for very long, as his mind jumped to the issue of the checkpoint they would need to go through once they arrived at Chawla Base. While none of what he had done while employed by Hargrove was under his name, there could still be trouble. “What are we going to do about the checkpoint?”

“At Chawla?”

“Yes.”

“Well, Kimball and I both talked to General Sachs, so we should get through with no problem, why?”

“I just wanted to know.”

“You’re worried you’re going to get pulled.”

Locus gave Fox a tired look that he knew she couldn’t see. “What do you think?”

“It’ll be fine. Besides, if trouble arises, I can always pay off security. I’m rich, remember?”

This was true, but it still didn’t ease Locus’ mind very much.

“That reminds me, I miiight have to pay off the guards anyways if they find out I stuck _ShowStopper_ in my bag,” Fox said, tapping her chin.

“You didn’t put it with the rest of the weapons? Why?” Locus asked.

Fox looked over at him. “Because if they realize what it is, they’ll wanna pull it apart and figure out how it works. And I can’t have that happen. That shield is dangerous enough as it is with _me_ using it. I don’t want to think about what could happen if that technology becomes public, and the wrong person gets their hands on it.”

Locus didn’t need to think hard to know that she was talking about Charon.

“Anywho, that’s a bridge we’ll cross when we get to it. Right now, let’s focus on the bridge we just crossed, and get ready to jump.”

 _Jump?_ Locus looked back out the window, realizing they were now in open space.

“Next stop, Earth,” Fox said.

Locus looked at her, and she met his gaze.

“As the late Captain Kirk once said,” Fox chimed, _“punch it.”_

Locus activated the slipspace drive and watched as the stars around them blurred into streaks of white light, and they hurtled towards the Sol System.

 

* * *

 

“Alright sir, you’re good to go. Proceed on through those doors, take a left and another left and the door at the end of the hall will take you out to the car rental.”

Locus gave the soldier a nod and headed in the direction he had pointed him in, letting out a long sigh. Going through the checkpoint had taken a few hours. Dozens of documents to review, hundreds of questions, and way too much time filled with him sitting and doing absolutely nothing. He wondered if it had taken just as long for Fox.

The two had been separated once they landed. They had been expected, of course, but that didn’t change the fact that they needed to run through intergalactic customs. Which meant no armor or weapons. The last time he had seen Fox was after their armor had been put onto rigs, and they’d both been handed packages containing standard-issue civvies to change into. A grey t-shirt with matching cargo pants and a pair of boots. His had come with a razor. And as he scratched his cheek, he realized how _good_ it felt to be clean-shaven again. He had tried on Chorus, but it was tough to get time alone in front of a mirror, especially given how the past few months had gone. He stepped through the doors at the end of the hallway, blinking in the harsh evening sunlight, eyes watering.

“Hey stranger!”

Locus looked over and saw Fox leaning up against the side of a car waving at him with an older man by her side. He adjusted the strap of the duffle bag on his shoulder and headed over to them.

“This is General Sachs,” Fox said when he got close enough.

“How do ya do!” Sachs greeted, holding out a hand for Locus to shake. He had a thick Texan accent, and the sort of rugged silver fox look one would expect to see on the front cover of a western romance novel aimed at older women.

Locus shook his hand and stepped back, glancing down at Fox, who gave him a smile.

“Glad you two made it alright. Sorry the checkpoint took so long. They gotta do things by the book, ya know? Even if it takes ‘em all day!” Sach said with a chuckle.

“It wasn’t terrible,” Fox replied, “though, now we’re going to be out way later than I’d hoped.”

“Well, I won’t keep you,” Sachs said, stepping up onto the curb.

Fox popped the trunk of the car, saying, “we’ll keep in touch. Maybe do lunch someday?”

Locus tossed his bag into the trunk of the car next to the box of gardening supplies Fox had insisted on bringing with them.

“Sure, sure!” Sachs grinned, his gaze leaving Fox as she got into the driver’s side and focusing on Locus instead. “And hey, fella?”

Locus narrowed his eyes slightly at the older man.

“You be careful around that one,” Sach said, nodding at Fox. “She’ll eat you alive.”

Locus frowned, and got in the car, listening as Sachs called out, “you two have a safe ride, y’hear?!”

Fox waved at him, then revved the engine and pulled away. She was mostly silent as they went through the final checkpoint at the base’s exit, which Locus was grateful for. She had been chatty the whole flight to Earth.

Locus stared out the window as they pulled onto the highway. Even though he lived nearby, this hardly felt like a homecoming. “How far away is our destination?”

“It’s about an hour drive to the warehouse. And then another forty-five minutes to the safehouse from there,” she explained, glancing over at him. “Might as well get comfortable.”

 _Might as well,_ he agreed inwardly, running a hand through his hair and fixing his ponytail. “What’s at the warehouse?”

“So, an old friend of mine set it up. It used to be boat storage for my dad...among other things. The guy who’s been working on it, Sanchez, has it stocked with weapons and supplies and stuff for us. Sachs is also going to get our armor and the guns and stuff we brought along shipped out there by the end of the week, once they finish processing it,” Fox explained.

They had mentioned something about that at the security checkpoint Locus had gone through when they first arrived. At least they would be well-armed in case something came up. Locus decided not to add to that and went back to looking out the window, watching the light the sun cast slowly turn from gold to orange.

It was a half hour before Fox spoke up again. “So do you need anything? I can ask Sanchez to run to the store for me and pick some stuff up.”

Locus thought for a moment, then shook his head.

“Cool. Well if you change your mind, let me know, and I can always call him back.”

Locus watched as she pulled a phone out of her pocket, blinking in surprise when she handed it to him.

“His number is in there. I’d get it myself, but I’m driving. Password is nine-eight-five-one.”

Locus put in the password and scrolled through her contacts, locating Sanchez and hitting the call button before handing the phone back to Fox, who held it up to her ear.

“Hey Sanchez! I- Oh, yeah, no, I’m fine! I was just- How close are you to the warehouse? You haven’t left yet? Okay. No- that’s fine! I was just wondering if you could do me a solid and pick some stuff up for me on your way there? Really? Okay, great, thank you!”

Locus stared at the road ahead while Fox talked on the phone, glancing over when she mentioned something about hair dye. From what he could tell, Fox’s hair had started to fade a little bit. It wasn’t enough to be terribly noticeable, but he wasn’t about to judge.

“Alright, really, I appreciate this, Sanchez! I’ll see you soon! Love you! Bye!”

 _That_ got Locus’ attention. Fox had mentioned that Sanchez was an old friend, but that small detail proved that they were far closer than he had anticipated. “How close are the two of you?” he asked Fox when she hung up and set her phone in the cup holder in the middle console.

“Oh, you caught that, huh?” Fox asked, giving him a wry grin before turning her eyes back to the road. “I’ve known him since I was a little kid. He worked for my dad as a bodyguard of sorts. Usually hung out around the house. Went to serve in the Great War when I was in high school. Came back when I started college. He’s the reason I switched to biomechanical engineering.”

“So he’s like family.”

“Exactly,” Fox nodded. “Closest thing I have left to it anyways.”

And _that_ struck a chord with Locus. This was the most telling information she’d shared about her family since he’d known her. However, from the way her tone had shifted when she brought it up, Locus decided that it wasn’t worth pursuing. Instead, he leaned his head back against the headrest, figuring that it wouldn’t hurt to close his eyes for a little bit. So he did.

When he opened his eyes again, they were turning into a gated area. It was almost dark, and in the side view mirror he could see the city; it’s array of skyscrapers casting long, cool shadows. He turned his gaze ahead when Fox slowed down, and looked up at the tall warehouse they had stopped in front of.

Fox got out, and so did he, breathing in the smell of the ocean and feeling the cool breeze coming off the water. He looked over when he heard Fox call out a greeting, and saw a man walking towards them, a door on the side of the warehouse half-open behind him.

 _“Mija!_ How are you? Oh, it’s so good to see you!” the man exclaimed, reaching Fox and pulling her into a tight hug that nearly lifted her off the ground. An impressive feat, considering how old he looked.

Fox hugged him back, her response partially muffled by the man’s shoulder, but Locus could make out, “oh man, I missed you!”

The man let Fox go, and she stepped back, but kept a hand on his shoulder as she looked towards Locus. “This is Sanchez,” she told him, then looked back to Sanchez and said, “Sanchez, this is my partner, Locus.”

“I see,” Sanchez said, and Fox dropped her hand back to her side as he approached Locus, stopping short with his hands in his pockets. Locus couldn’t help but feel a prickle of unease as the other man sized him up. “Tough-looking fella, ain’t ya?”

Locus narrowed his eyes.

Sanchez did the same, seeming to hold him in a staring contest just long enough for Locus to begin to tense up. Then the other man let out a sudden laugh and turned back to Fox, saying, “I expected you’d find someone with a better sense of humor!”

Fox just shrugged.

Locus glared at both of them.

Sanchez chuckled, and gestured for the two of them to follow him, heading towards the door he had come through. “How about I show you two all your new toys?”

Locus tailed Fox as she followed Sanchez into the warehouse. When they got inside, he looked around and saw...boats. A dozen boats and a workbench shoved into the far corner with tools mounted above it. And some storage crates. This couldn’t be it.

“You said the warehouse was already set up,” he said, looking at Fox.

“This is only the ground level,” Fox replied, tailing Sanchez to the far corner of the warehouse and into the middle of a large square on the floor bordered by black and yellow-striped paint. “Come on!”

Locus stared at the square for a moment, then stepped into it, walking around behind Fox and Sanchez, confusion written on his face.

Sanchez produced what looked like a remote from his pocket, and hit a few buttons on the number pad. There was a beep, then a mechanical click, then, around the inside border of the paint, barred railings rose up. Locus realized they were standing on some sort of hidden elevator platform. There was another click, then the floor shifted, and they descended.

The shaft was lit by dim orange lights which did little to compensate for the darkness that engulfed them once a panel slid shut over the hole above them. Their descent lasted about a half-minute before the walls of the shaft gave way to open space. Locus blinked as he found himself staring at a huge open room filled with crates and storage shelves and all manner of equipment.

“Sanchez, you outdid yourself,” Fox breathed, eyes wide.

“I pulled a few strings. You can thank Sachs and his boys for most of it though,” Sanchez said as the platform eased to a stop and the railings retracted.

Fox gave him an excited look, and he nodded at the space, saying, “go on! Take a look around!”

Grinning wide, Fox stepped off the lift and headed for the wall covered in dozens of guns, and Locus moved to follow her, but stopped when he bumped into the back of Sanchez’s hand, raised at about chest height. He blinked, bewildered, then stared confusedly at Sanchez, who hadn’t so much as turned his head to look at him.

“I more or less raised that girl,” Sanchez said without missing a beat once Fox was out of earshot. “She’s the closest thing I have to a daughter. So if you let anything happen to her, or _think_ about hurting her,” Sanchez turned his head and fixed Locus in a hard stare, “no one will ever find your body. Understand?”

Locus narrowed his eyes at the other man, but decided against an argument, and simply nodded.

Sanchez held his gaze for a moment longer, then he blinked and turned his head away and let his hand drop down to his side. “Good,” he said, with a feigned pleasantness that made Locus grind his teeth. The man shoved his hands into his pockets and followed Fox, whistling cheerfully.

Locus watched him go, brushed off his shirt, and followed him, keeping his distance.

“Man, you got like every weapon on the market over here!” Fox exclaimed, looking over Sanchez with her hands on her hips.

“Sachs helped with all of this. That, and your friend, General Kimball,” Sanchez said, coming to stand beside her.

There _were_ a lot of weapons on that wall, Locus observed. There were also dozens of crates that held even more guns and ammo. It was strange, even with an authorized operation under the UNSC, he hadn’t expected to have access to this kind of weaponry. “What kind of strings did Sachs have to pull to obtain all of this?” he asked, looking over at Sanchez.

Sanchez shrugged. “I don’t know names, but I _do_ know that your operation was approved through ONI.”

“That’s a Navy branch,” Locus said, slightly confused.

“Yeah, but they’ll employ _anyone_ to get things done, even _civilians,”_ Fox said. “Which should help us out a _ton_ later when we go to try to build a team.”

 _Interesting,_ Locus thought. He turned away from the wall and and looked around some more, noting what looked like a holo-projection table closer to one end of the space, with some computers and a few server towers nearby. On the other end, there was an area that was partitioned off that, judging by the markings on the crates near it, could have been a medical station.

Locus was startled out of his observation when Fox walked past him towards the partition. He glanced back towards Sanchez, who gave him an amused look, then turned and followed her.

Inside of the partitioned area was exactly what Locus had expected. There was a sink and a few cots, and some other medical supplies. At least they probably wouldn’t bleed out if one of them got hurt.

Fox stepped past him and looked over at Sanchez, who was standing a little ways away. “And I’m guessing you got all that computer stuff I asked for?”

“Of course!”

“Cool,” Fox said with a grin. “I’ll probably take a look at it tomorrow.”

“Sounds good to me,” Sanchez replied, then turned back towards the platform they had entered on. Fox and Locus followed him, and he pressed another code into the remote’s number pad. However, instead of up, they started moving down again. Locus stole a glance at Sanchez, who had a pleased look on his face.

They descended into another space, smaller than the first, that had vehicles parked diagonally against the walls. On the opposite end of the lift was a set of massive sliding doors. Locus wondered where the tunnel they no doubt concealed let out.

The three stepped off the lift, and Locus’ eyes immediately went to the humvee in the corner with a machine gun mounted on its top. _What_ they would need something like that for was beyond him, especially since they were in a civilian area.

“Here we got all your fancy cars,” Sanchez said, leading them off the platform and through the aisle between the vehicles. “We have two armored SUV’s with bulletproof windows. Three armored sports cars, because why the hell not? Also with bulletproof glass.” He pointed at a vehicle on the other end of the space and said, “that SUV in the far right there has nitrous, as well as being armored and bulletproof.” He turned and faced Fox and Locus, coming to a stop. “And all of the armored vehicles have retractable kneecappers built into the hubcaps.”

“And the Humvee?” Locus asked. “Isn’t that a bit much to have in an area so densely populated with civilians?”

“Ah, I saw you looking at that,” Sanchez said. “That one is only for extreme emergencies. With any luck, you’ll never have to use it.”

Locus nodded.

“As for regular everyday transport, we have all of the family cars to the left of the doors,” Sanchez said, turning and leading them to the end of the aisle.

Clearly _someone_ in Fox’s family had a thing for flaunting their wealth, Locus thought as he stared at the seven cars. He could pick out a Lamborghini and a Bugatti, as well as what he assumed were a few other extremely expensive cars.

He must have had some sort of look on his face, because Fox said, “don’t worry, those were my dad’s. The little Dodge on the end there is mine.”

Locus followed her gaze to the black and grey sports car on the end.

“If you wanna ride that one out and load all of your stuff into it, I could return that rental for you and just take a cab back here,” Sanchez offered.

Fox stared at him. “You don’t have to!”

 _“Mija,_ don’t worry about it,” Sanchez said, waving his hand dismissively with a warm smile on his face. “I’ve got nothing better to do tonight. And the cats have already been fed. Besides, there’s a rental place a few blocks over.”

“Are you sure?”

“I wouldn’t have suggested it if I wasn’t!”

“Okay…” Fox said, walking past him and taking the keys off a hook on the wall behind the car. “Come on, Locus.”

He followed her and the two of them got in, Fox turning the key and bringing the car to life. Locus watched as Fox hit the button on a remote clipped onto the sun visor on her side. There was a heavy sound, like a massive lock sliding out of place, that echoed through the space, then the doors to their left slid open. Out of the corner of his eye, Locus spotted Sanchez heading back towards the platform, and wondered if he planned on meeting them back where they had entered.

His gaze slid forwards again as Fox pulled the car out from where it was parked and steered it into the mouth of the long tunnel the doors had revealed. They went over some type of sensor, and the walls of the tunnel were suddenly lined with blue lights.

Locus exchanged a look with Fox, who had a huge grin on her face. “Wanna see what she can do?” she asked.

“Only if you keep it under sixty,” Locus replied, his heart already sinking.

“Deal,” Fox said, and floored it.

The lights on the walls turned into a single, glowing blue line as they sped by. Locus guessed it could be worse. The tunnel could be way narrower and have sharper turns. At least he wasn’t _completely_ afraid for his life.

They rounded another slight bend, and Locus caught sight of the tunnel’s exit. Fox began to slow them down, and they pulled out onto a dirt path in the middle of a wooded area. Through the trees, Locus could barely make out the lights from the city. “Where are we?” he asked.

“Old service road,” Fox replied, bringing them to a stop and hitting the remote on the sun visor again.

Locus turned back towards the mouth of the tunnel, and watched as a set of doors similar to the ones they had entered through slid shut. To his surprise, following the mechanical click of the lock, the doors suddenly flickered out of existence. “You have active camouflage on the exit,” he said with surprise.

“Yup! Makes it tough for people to trespass,” Fox replied, taking her foot off the brakes.

The service road was winding, but short, and it deposited them onto a back road that connected to the main circuit they had come in on. When they arrived back at the warehouse, Sanchez was leaning up against the rental with his arms crossed and a grocery bag hanging off of his wrist. Fox pulled up beside him and stopped.

“Key me,” Sanchez said, holding up a hand and tossing the bag to her with the other.

Fox caught it and threw him the keys to the rental car, and he unlocked it while Fox laid down the front seats of the Dodge and popped the trunk. They transferred everything over from the rental, shoving the box of gardening supplies into the trunk and stuffing everything else where it would fit.

Locus leaned up against the side of Fox’s car while she said her goodbyes to Sanchez.

“Come by and have tea with me some time, yeah? The cats miss having you around,” Sanchez said, hugging Fox.

“I sure will,” Fox said as he let her go. “You take care of yourself, okay? And thank you!”

Sanchez waved as they got back in the car and pulled away.

Once they got back onto the main road, Fox spoke up, “so what do you think?”

Locus eyed her. “About?”

“The warehouse, silly!”

Locus gave her a look, not particularly fond of being called ‘silly.’ “It’s well-stocked.”

“ _That’s_ the best you’ve got for me?” Fox said, looking over at him. “It’s well-stocked? Come on! I want your _opinion!_ ”

“And I gave it to you,” Locus replied, not at all seeing what the problem was with his response.

“No you didn’t. You told me what you thought I wanted to hear. I wanna know likes and dislikes, buddy. We gotta get good at this communication thing, or this whole relationship of ours isn’t going to work out,” Fox said.

Locus sighed, looking towards the road in front of them. “Are we sure it’s enough to supply a team?”

“Don’t know,” Fox replied. “We’ll have to see.”

“You plan on improvising?” Locus asked incredulously. He knew Fox was naive, but this was just ridiculous.

“I mean, I don’t know what kind of team we’re going to put together, because we haven’t gotten started on figuring it out yet. So I don’t know,” Fox replied, shrugging. “So if we do, we do, and if we don’t, we don’t. _Es lo que es.”_

That wasn’t a good answer, and Locus was sure she knew it, too. Unhappily, he looked out the window, watching the industrial area of Boston fly past.

After some time, Fox spoke up again. “If it makes you feel any better, the first thing I’ll do once we get everything set up is get to work on finding candidates for our team.”

It was something, at least. Locus looked back at her.

“I’m thinking probably like, a team of five or six, including us. Maybe bigger, like seven or--holy _shit!_ ” Fox hit the brakes suddenly and pulled off the road, looking in the direction of the railguard on her side.

“What--” Locus didn’t have time to finish his question before she put the car in park and got out, her head whipping left and right before she jogged across the street towards...what looked like a person standing on the other side of the rail guard. Like they were about to jump. Into the traffic filing into the tunnel directly below them.

 _Oh boy,_ Locus thought with a sigh, getting out and walking around the back of the car. _This_ would be interesting.

 

* * *

 

Fox made sure her footsteps were heavy as she approached the man on the other side of the railguard. It wouldn’t do either of them any good if she snuck up and scared him and he lost his balance.

When she got close, he glanced back towards her, and she felt her heart stop. This was just a _kid._ Early twenties at most! What the hell was he _doing?_

“Hey,” she said softly, coming up beside him and leaning against the railguard, folding her forearms on top of it. She heard the kid sniffle in response, and watched him swipe at his nose with the sleeve of his hoodie.

“Are you a cop?” the kid asked in a wobbly voice that was stuffy from crying.

“Nope,” Fox replied.

“Are you gonna call them?”

“Do you want me to?”

“No.”

“You wanna talk?”

“No.”

“Okay, that’s fine. We don’t have to talk,” Fox replied. She looked out over the railguard, realizing she could see the harbor from where she was. “Real pretty night,” she said idly. “Then again, I’ve been up in space for so long that I forgot what nights on Earth looked like.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the kid glance at her. It was a start.

“You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff that’s up there. Trees that look like they’re made of neon. Planets covered in water so still that when you’re out on it, it looks like you’re sailing in the stars. Really weird lifeforms. Stuff that has like, eight legs and no eyes. It’s crazy.” She let out a small chuckle. “Of course, it doesn’t beat the sight of human innovation. You go so far and see so much, and realize how small we all are, that the fact that we’re able to colonize a bunch of planets all over the galaxy is pretty mind blowing.”

“I thought you said we didn’t have to talk,” the kid said.

“ _We_ aren’t talking. I am,” Fox replied, looking back at him.

“What do you want?”

Fox shrugged. “Just came in from a ten-year expedition in buttfuck space, saw you chilling, decided to strike up a conversation.”

“You’re trying to talk me out of this, aren’t you?”

“Ehhh,” Fox turned her eyes up towards him, “to be fair, turning yourself into a Jackson Pollock isn’t exactly something you should be striving for at your age.”

“You’re not taking this seriously.”

“No, I am,” Fox said with a nod. “All I’m saying is that you’re...what? Twenty-two, twenty-three…?”

“Twenty-five.”

“Yeah, okay, see? You’re twenty-five and you’re on the wrong side of a railguard looking down at a two-story jump into traffic,” Fox said. “Which means that something went wrong, you don’t know how to fix it or make yourself feel better about it, and you want out.”

The kid looked at her strangely, like he wasn’t sure what to do with her. “Okay, so, maybe you’re right. What does it matter?”

“What matters is that at your age, you should be working towards finding your dream job, trying to get a stable income, figuring out how rent works. Etcetera, etcetera.”

“Maybe it doesn’t work like that for some people. Ever consider that?”

“Honey, believe me, I have _been_ where you are right now,” Fox said, letting her voice get a bit more serious. “Not literally, for the record. Not much a fan of car wrecks.”

The kid looked away, and Fox glanced down when she saw his grip on the railguard get just a little tighter.

“So, you got a name?”

The kid hesitated, then in a quiet voice said, “Daniel Grace.”

Fox nodded, “solid name. I go by Fox. It’s sort of a nickname.”

“I go by Danny.”

 _And now we’re getting somewhere,_ Fox thought. “So what put you here?” she asked. “It’s always something. No one ever winds up in a spot like this because they wanted it.”

Danny sniffled again, staring down at the traffic below. “My job,” he said.

“You get fired?”

“You could say that.”

“Where did you work?”

“Boston Police Department.”

“So you’re kinda like a mini version of what I do,” Fox said, a half-smile on her face.

“I _was._ ”

“So what about getting laid off put you right here? The money part of it?”

“Not really,” Danny replied, and Fox could see his eyes welling up with tears.

“Okay, take your time. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” she said softly.

Danny let out a small sob and his face crumpled a bit as he tried to wipe away his tears. Fox let him cry, keeping an eye on the grip he had on the railguard.

“I killed someone.”

Fox blinked. Then she closed her eyes and let out a long sigh, opening them and staring at the floor and nodding. “Yeah...that’ll mess you up.”

“I didn’t have a _choice!_ He had a _gun!_ ”

There were a dozen things Fox knew she could say. It was too easy to tell the kid that he’d had no choice, but that obviously wouldn’t help his situation. So back to the drawing board she went. _Think, Fox, what would you want to hear?_ Then she had it. “I’ve killed people before too. Probably way more than you have.”

Danny fell silent, looking over at her. Fox couldn’t tell if he looked scared or not.

“I threw up the first time. Didn’t sleep for a month,” she said. “Second time was just as bad.” She turned her eyes towards him. “I’ve been doing this for years, and it never gets any easier. You find ways to cope with it; I usually use humor, because if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry instead.” Fox looked back out over the city. “I’m sorry you went through that. You’re young. You didn’t deserve to be put in that position.”

“They told me I did the right thing.”

Fox looked up at Danny. “To survive,” she added.

“What?” Danny looked down at her in surprise.

“You did the right thing to _survive,”_ Fox repeated. “It’s a terrible thing to kill someone, but sometimes you have to think about yourself.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Well, they pointed a gun at you, so you fired back--”

“No, I mean, why didn’t they say it like that?” Danny asked, shaking his head. “I got all freaked out when they told me I was right. They called me a hero. But I was a _coward!_ I should have done a better job of talking him into putting the gun down!”

“But you didn’t,” Fox said. “And now you have to decide what to do with it.”

Danny stared at her. “I have no money. I’m getting evicted _tomorrow_ . What _can_ I do with it?! I can’t even afford therapy!”

“So here’s the deal,” Fox said, “I’m actually looking for some people to assemble a team with. We need a driver. Someone who knows the city inside and out and doesn’t have any other commitments. Someone like an ex-cop.”

“You’re...offering me a job?” Danny asked, surprise written across his face.

“On the condition that you come back to this side of the railguard, yes,” Fox said, standing upright.

“How do I know you’re not just trying to get me over there so you can call the cops?”

“You don’t. But I’ve got no reason to lie to you,” Fox replied. “Plus I don’t want to put you in a weird position where you get detained by your own co-workers. It wouldn’t help your situation.”

Danny bit his lip, seeming to consider what she said. He looked at her, then down at the highway, then back to her. Then he swallowed hard and slowly climbed back over the railguard.

Fox gave him an approving nod, then dug in her pocket for her phone. “How much do you owe your landlord?”

“A lot, why?”

“You have a PayPal? Venmo? Google Cash?”

“Y-yeah, I have a Venmo. Wait, you’re not--”

“Gimme your email, kid.”

Danny gaped at her, then did as she told him. Fox opened the app on her phone and entered his email in to transfer money to. “I’m gonna wire twenty grand over to you.” She held up a hand when Danny started to protest. “You have a phone?” she asked.

“I-Yes?”

“Unlock it and lemme see it.”

Danny pulled out his phone, typed in his password, and handed it to her. Fox navigated to his address book and added herself as one of his contacts. “You don’t need to get back to me right away,” she explained, handing his phone back to him. “But if you want the job, it’s yours. It won’t solve all of your problems, but it’ll help with most of them. You don’t have to kill anybody. Just drive cars, and maybe run a few errands, okay?”

“Is this like...black market stuff?” Danny asked carefully.

“Pshh, _no._ That would be _illegal,_ ” Fox replied. “I work for the U.N.S.C. They’ll be cool with me bringing you onboard as long as you pass background checks and stuff. So don’t get arrested for selling crack cocaine in the next week, and we’ll be good.”

“O-okay. I- _thank you._ ”

Fox shrugged. “Look, kid, I’ve been in some shitty situations too. It sucks. So I’m throwing you a line here. No strings attached. Just take care of yourself and get back to me if you want the job, okay?”

“Okay.”

“So head on home, clean yourself up, pay your rent, and book a therapy session, okay? And shoot me a text message that you got home safe. I don’t want you running off and finding another bridge, got it?” Fox said.

“Okay,” Danny said, a ghost of a smile appearing on his face as he wiped his eyes. “I-I will. Thanks. Like really. Thank you.”

Fox gave him a nod, then headed back across the street, noticing Locus leaning against the side of the car, arms crossed, watching them.

 _“What,”_ he asked when she reached him, “was _that?”_

“That,” Fox said, looking towards Danny who had started back down they way they had come, stealing over-the-shoulder glances in their direction every few steps, “was an opportunity.” She walked over and hopped back into the driver’s side, looking over when Locus joined her.

“What could you possibly see in someone like _that?”_ he asked as she pulled back onto the road.

“Funny,” Fox said, looking over at him. “Kimball asked me the same thing about you.”

Locus fell into an unhappy silence and looked out the window, and Fox grinned all the way to her apartment.

 

* * *

 

Fox’s apartment was a building on the outskirts of the city with a parking garage built into the sublevel and an elevator that went straight to the penthouse. It wasn’t anything extravagant, but it was certainly one of the more modern buildings in the area.

Locus listened idly as Fox talked about how they had rooftop access because they were in the penthouse, and about how she probably had some cleaning to do, and about how she was _definitely_ going to order some Chinese food later because oh my _gosh_ it’s been _for-ever_ since she’s had some, and blah, blah, blah. Had she gotten more talkative since they arrived on Earth? Locus was _certain_ she had gotten more talkative since they arrived on Earth.

He sighed, partially with relief, as the elevator stopped at the penthouse. When the doors opened, Fox led him into what looked like some sort of lobby. She pulled a keyring out of her pocket and unlocked the door ahead, pushing it open.

“Welcome to my home!” she exclaimed, turning back towards him as he walked through the door.

Fox’s apartment was...nice. Well-furnished. Granite countertops in the kitchen. An open living room with a hallway branching off of it that led to what were probably bedrooms. Better than what he could afford, anyways.

He was pulled out of his thoughts when Fox suddenly called out, “honey, I’m hoooome!”

He was about to ask what in the world she was on about, when there was what sounded like a startup sound for some type of computer, and an overhead voice exclaimed,

_“Hello Miss Pepper!”_

“Who--?” Locus looked over at Fox, who had a big grin on her face.

“Hi Marz! How have you been these past six years?” Fox asked, setting her bags down by the kitchen island.

_“Bored. Mrs. Li’s cat was put down.”_

“Hm...I should get her a card.”

_“Don’t bother, it was ten months ago. It would be weird.”_

“Yes, but I’m going to _anyways,”_ Fox sighed, turning back to Locus who had been listening to their interaction with confusion. “This is Marz,” she explained. “She’s the AI that my father built.”

Locus stared. “The AI that overlooks the _entirety_ of the U.N.S.C. database is in your apartment,” he said incredulously. Fox had failed to mention _that._

“Well, yes and no,” Fox said. “The unit she’s in is located at Emblem headquarters, but an iteration of her is here.”

“Isn’t that incredibly insecure?”

Fox laughed. “It’s not like just _anyone_ can use the database! You have to be given access through an approved retinal scan...which I need to get done _stat_ if we’re going to be any help to Kimball.” She shrugged and waved her hand, “I’ll just deal with it later. Your room is down the hall, by the way. Door on the end. It’s a second master bedroom, so it’s got a bathroom, so we don’t have to worry about mixing up our toothbrushes.” She picked up her bags and headed down the hall, opening up the door to the left and throwing her things in, then stepped into the doorway to let Locus walk past. “Once you get settled, I’ll have Marz scan you into the system so you can access the network here,” he heard her say as he opened the door to the guest room.

The room, like the living area of the apartment, was also well-furnished. The bed had a blue comforter on it with a few decorative pillows and a blue corduroy platypus. Beside it, there was a closet built into the wall, and on the opposite side of the room, under the window, was a white-painted dresser with a photograph in a picture frame on it. Locus let the door swing shut behind him, and noticed that there was a desk right next to it with colored construction paper sitting in one of the upper cubbies. He set his bags on the bed, then walked over and picked up the picture frame.

There were two girls in the photo, arms slung around each other. The younger one had black, wavy hair, and was missing a tooth. The older one had long, dark brown hair that was pulled back into a high ponytail and a smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks. Even without the presence of the scar across her nose, Locus realized he was looking at a photo of a much younger Fox, with what had to have been her younger sister, given how alike their facial structures were. He looked around the room again as he set the photo down, and realized that he was likely staying in the room Fox’s sister used to use whenever she came to visit. Strange, considering the two only seemed to be a few years apart, and yet Fox hadn’t removed the accessories that were geared more towards a younger age group. His mind wandered back to how Fox had mentioned that Sanchez was the only family she had left. Whatever had happened, it likely took place shortly after the photo was taken. Maybe a few months or years.

With a sigh, he looked back at his bags, and decided that he would be better off getting the rest of his things from his place, and unpacking all at once when he got back. He stepped out into the hallway and made his way back to the kitchen, where Fox was on a stool, going through the cabinets.

“Hi! All settled?” she asked when she noticed him.

He shook his head. “I was going to unpack everything at once.”

“Ohhhh,” Fox said, pulling a box of mac n’ cheese out of one of the cabinets, looking at the expiration date, making a face, and tossing it into the trash can she had pulled out from under the sink. She then hopped off the step ladder and pulled her keys off of a hook by the front door, tossing them to him.

“There’s a G.P.S. in the car, if you wanna use that,” she said, walking back over to the stepping stool and climbing up on it, resuming her work. “Also, if you get back and smell bleach, it’s because I was cleaning. So don’t worry. Also, text me what you want from the Chinese place before you head back so it’ll still be warm when you get here.”

“Understood,” Locus replied with a nod, giving her one last sideways glance before he stepped out of her apartment.

 

* * *

 

The ride to his apartment in Cambridge wasn’t horrible. He got there, packed up everything he thought he would need; clothes, shoes, his computer, a few random weapons and tools he had laying around, a bit of cash, his passport, and loaded it all into Fox’s car, grabbing a water bottle from the fridge and his car keys on his last trip. He figured he’d make time during the week to get it over to Fox’s apartment so he wouldn’t have to use her car.

On the way back, it started raining. When he was stopped at a red light, he remembered to text Fox his order for Chinese. When he finally got back to the apartment, the smell of cleaning products hit him like a brick wall. He screwed up his face and headed to the guest room, dropping the rest of his stuff on the bed and getting to work unpacking it all. It took him a few minutes to get everything sorted, but once he had, he headed back to the main living area to get a better look around. Fox was nowhere to be found, but her bedroom door was closed, which meant that he had a few minutes to himself.

The first thing he took note of was the large brown bag of Chinese food on the kitchen island. He decided to leave it alone until Fox came out. Didn’t want to be rude. He turned towards the living room, walking over and taking it all in. There was a blue suede sofa with a glass coffee table in front of it and a lamp beside it, and a couple of armchairs across from it with a small table between them. They were all angled towards the large flat screen TV that was positioned in a nook built into the wall, with shelves on either side of it and cabinets in a row on the bottom. On the right side there were DVD cases, and on the left side of it, there were books, with a few photos in picture frames on the very bottom shelf beneath them. One of them had Fox and her sister in it with a man and woman standing on either side of them.

Locus picked it up and examined it, and came to the conclusion that this was definitely Fox’s family. In this photo, she looked much more like she did today, minus the scar and shorter haircut.

The sound of Fox’s bedroom door opening startled him, and he didn’t have time to put the picture back on the shelf before she walked out into the living area in fresh clothes with a towel wrapped around her hair.

“Well hey, you!” she exclaimed when she saw him.

Locus wasn’t sure what to say back, given the awkwardness of the whole situation, so he just blinked at her.

“Looking over the family history, I see,” she said, nodding at the picture in his hand.

“I was just--” he cut off when he realized that he had literally no excuse.

“It’s cool. They’re there for people to look at. I don’t care,” she said with a laugh, coming over and leaning against the arm of the couch. “Which one is that?”

He showed the photo to her wordlessly.

Fox nodded, and the smile on her face turned a little sad. “Yeah, that was the last family photo we took together.”

And Locus felt something twist in his gut when she said that. He handed the photo to her, and she took it, gazing down at it, her smile fading. “Was it the war?” he asked carefully.

Fox glanced up at him. “No, no. It wasn’t anything as awful as that. Thankfully.” She sighed and looked back up at him. “It was a car wreck. Bad one. But there’s a bit of backstory to it.”

“You don’t have to share.” The last thing he wanted to do was push her.

Fox closed her eyes and waved a hand. “No, it’s fine. You’re going to hear it eventually anyways. Might as well tell you now.” She opened her eyes and looked away. “My sister and I grew up rich, obviously. But my parents weren’t really around, so Sanchez or one of the other bodyguards was usually around with one of our nannies. But when I got old enough, I pretty much wound up raising Brie. That’s my sister, by the way. Sanchez went off to the war, Marz reached metastability, I went through high school. Sanchez comes back with a missing leg when I’m about to start my second semester of college. Change from a business and computer science double-major to biomechanical engineering and the latter.” Fox let out a long sigh. “Aaaaand, well...So...my dad wasn’t really... _happy_ with my choice to change my major. There was a huge argument, we stopped talking, he wouldn’t let me see Brie. It was a mess. Fast-forward to my sophomore year. I was in the pipeline for the U.N.S.C. Dad and I talked. We finally make up and agree to all meet at my sister’s art show. She had gotten her stuff into a gallery through an art contest at the high school she was at. My work at the lab takes longer than I thought it would, so I hurry to try to get there, and get stuck in traffic on the highway. I get to the crest of the overpass and see the ambulance lights.”

Locus felt something in his chest twist from the bitter chuckle Fox let out at that.

“I got closer, saw the car, saw the license plate, and I knew...they were _gone._ ” She fell silent for some time after that before speaking again. “The worst part was that I didn’t really know my parents well enough to feel that sorry about losing them. They were always working, always distant, like they had us just to say that they had kids. I don’t think I ever really convinced myself that they really enjoyed us. Brie, though. She wanted to work for Disney. Said she was gonna make a ton of really big movies, and that one day I’d see her name up on the credits roll. She could have gotten there too, if it wasn’t for the asshat with a half-empty bottle of vodka in the front seat.

“You miss her,” he said. It was obvious, after all.

“Every day,” Fox replied softly, placing the picture frame back on the shelf. “It’s silly,” she said, shaking her head, “I’m almost glad that they died in a wreck. At least it was quick. So many people lost loved ones in horrible ways during the war, and I lost mine to a drunk idiot in a pickup truck.”

And the knot in Locus’ chest twisted tighter, and he said, in a quiet voice, “I’m sorry.”

“At least I got to say goodbye,” Fox sighed and put her thumbs in her pockets. She frowned and stared at her socks for a moment, then looked over at him. “But that’s enough of a sob story for tonight.” And the smile was back on her face, but Locus had a sneaking suspicion that it was fake. “I’m gonna go dig into this terrible Chinese food,” she said with a wave of her hand as she turned and walked away.

Locus watched her go, glancing back at the photo on the shelf before following her.

 

* * *

 

“Dude, I cannot _tell_ you how long it’s been since I’ve had this stuff,” Fox said, sticking her chopsticks into the now empty box of lo mein on the coffee table and leaning back on the sofa with her arms folded behind her head.

Locus had to admit that it was a nice break from M.R.E.’s, ration bars, and the nonsense they served in the mess hall back on Chorus. At least Chinese food had seasoning.

“Hey Marz, do me a solid and run Sunshine here’s profile through the system as a home-base administrator,” Fox said suddenly.

 _“Seriously?”_ Marz asked.

“Did I stutter?” Fox replied.

 _“If you insist,”_ Marz said, sounding unhappy.

Locus listened to the exchange in silence, looking over at Fox when Marz finished speaking and asked, “what’s a home-base administrator?”

“It means you’ll be able to access any and all of Marz’s features that are available to this iteration of her,” Fox explained. “This apartment is home-base, so you’re not actually getting into the database per se, but she can do other things like jam traffic cams or pull security footage and stuff like that.”

“Will the U.N.S.C. be aware of this?” Locus asked.

“No. Marz knows how to keep this sort of thing quiet,” Fox replied, looking over towards the kitchen island as a tone sounded.

 _“Okay, that is one Samuel Alejandro Ortez Rivera given full administrative access to home-base,”_ Marze chimed.

Locus squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, uncomfortable with the fact that Marz had dropped his full name. Not that it really mattered. Fox had access to his file. She knew it already. But _still._ He looked over at Fox, who seemed to have taken notice of his discomfort and said, “we should have her call us by our codenames.”

“Yeah, I was just thinking of that,” Fox replied with a nod, then said “hey Marz, set his nickname to ‘Locus,’ and mine to ‘Fox,’ please.”

 _“Done,”_ Marz replied. _“Anything else?”_

“That’s it, thanks.”

 _“Cool, I’m going to finish adjusting the signal from Chorus while simultaneously using all your bandwidth to stream every episode of_ Breaking Bad _at once. Bye.”_

Fox rolled her eyes and looked over at Locus. “You’ll get used to her.”

Locus doubted that very much. With nothing to add, he just looked away and busied himself with gathering the remnants of their meal into the bag it had come from, carrying it into the kitchen, and shoving it into the trash under the sink. On his way back to the living room, he glanced at the clock on the wall above the hallway. It was getting late.

“Has Kimball called yet?” he asked as he passed Fox.

Fox glanced at her watch and made a face. “She said to call her when we were all settled.” She swung her legs over the side of the couch and stood, pulling the towel off her head and shaking her now vibrantly ginger-dyed hair. “I’ll go get my laptop,” she said, tucking her towel under her arm and heading for her room. When she returned, she’d replaced the towel with her laptop, which she carried over to the kitchen island.

Locus stood and joined her, watching as she set up the chat.

“It looks like Marz finished working on the signal, so we _should_ be able to see her clearly,” Fox mused.

Locus blinked. Right. This was a video chat. Frowning, he stepped out of the webcam’s field of view.

“Feeling a bit camera shy?” Fox asked, glancing towards him. “Don’t worry, she never said she had to _see_ you. Just say ‘hi’ so she knows you’re there.”

Locus said nothing, and narrowed his eyes at the laptop screen. Fox fixed her hair while the connection loaded, and finished just in time for the call to go through. Locus took another cautious step back.

“I was beginning to worry you’d never call,” came Kimball’s voice.

“Are you kidding me? I’ve been dying to see your beau-tiful...uh...helmet again all day!” Fox exclaimed.

Locus squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. _Oh boy._

“How was the flight?” Kimball asked.

“Not terrible. We listened to some tunes.”

“You say _‘we’_ , but I don’t see Locus anywhere,” Kimball said flatly.

Locus looked up when Fox glanced over at him. “I’m right here,” he spoke up, with a sigh.

“He’s a bit camera-shy,” Fox explained in a stage whisper to Kimball.

“I _see,_ ” Kimball said, sounding less than pleased. “How was the checkpoint?”

“Well, so we got through no problem. I met with Sachs, and he’s having our power armor and the weapons we brought with us shipped to to the warehouse at the end of the week. And we’re all settled into the safehouse, which is where we are now,” Fox explained, finishing with a satisfied smile.

“How about the AI you mentioned? When are you expecting to get started with that?”

“We’ve actually already gotten established with her,” Fox replied. Then, “say hi, Marz!”

 _“Hello...General Vanessa Kimball. Pleasure to meet you!”_ Marz chimed overhead.

“This is the AI your father built?” Kimball asked, a hint of doubt in her voice.

Fox nodded. “Her primary unit is located at Emblem headquarters in the inner city, but an iteration of her hangs out here.” Her smile faded. “I do have some bad-ish news for you though.”

“What’s wrong?” Kimball asked, sounding concerned.

“It’s nothing that I can’t take care of in the next week or so,” Fox explained. “But since I went blind in New Mombasa, I had to get my eyes replaced, which means I need to update my retinal scan. I would have needed to anyways, since we’re supposed to update our retinal scan annually _anyways._ But the point is that I won’t have full access to Marz’s database right away. I’m going to contact Mr. Carson, who’s the CEO of Emblem, and get that squared away. I just need to figure out a good excuse for Pepper to come back to Earth earlier than planned.”

From where he stood, Locus could see Kimball tilt her head in confusion. He had figured Fox had told her about the retinal scan. Apparently, he was wrong.

“So what I’m hearing is that until you come up with a way to get that retinal scan, you can’t do what we sent you to Earth to do?” Kimball said, sounding impatient.

“No, no! Don’t worry! The iteration of Marz that hangs out at this apartment should be able to help us get the information that we’ll need. Plus I’ve got a friend at Emblem who has access to the system who’ll help us if I ask her to,” Fox replied quickly. “The plan-- that I admittedly came up with just now-- is to have her locate someone who has access to Charon’s network. Through them, we should be able to get a pretty steady stream of information about who Hargrove is maintaining contact with. The downside is that we’ll only probably have access to the stuff that gets _logged._ But once I get the retinal scan, that shouldn’t be a problem.”

“So...can you do your job?”

“Absolutely,” Fox replied.

“Then that’s all I need to know,” Kimball said, but sounded a little relieved. “Anything else?” she asked.

“That’s it,” Fox said.

“Then thank you for the update. Like I said, I expect a daily report.”

“Noted. And hey, thanks for agreeing to this,” Fox said suddenly. “I really do think that we’ll be able to help you guys out a ton down here!”

“I certainly hope so.”

Fox grinned. “We won’t let you down!”

“I believe that,” Kimball said. “You both get some rest. It sounds like you’re going to need it.” Then she announced, “General Kimball, signing off,” leaving the two of them standing in the dull bluish glow of the laptop screen.

“Well that wasn’t horrible,” Fox said, closing the laptop and tucking it under her arm.

Locus just sighed and looked away. If there was one thing Kimball had said that he agreed with, it was that they would both need rest. They were undoubtedly in for a difficult next few months. And with Hargrove’s imminent arrival and trial...well…

It was all downhill from here.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Hargrove took a sip of his coffee, staring out the floor-to-ceiling window at where _The Staff of Charon_ was docked. It had been nearly seventy-two hours since the attack on his ship, and he and his crew had been forced to remain in the _Aria_ station until a full system scan had been completed, and necessary repairs had been taken care of. By now, Hargrove’s frustration had settled into a dull buzz in the back of his head that was just enough to keep him from relaxing. He could be on Io by now, making sure the process of eliminating anything the U.N.S.C. could hold against him was running smoothly. But instead, he was stuck inside of a station drinking cheap coffee. Brilliant.

At least the mercenary he had hired had reached Earth. She had contacted him several hours ago to confirm her arrival. It wasn’t much, but she should give him a head start, especially now that she had information on the contact he had given her. Now it was just a matter of drawing said contact _in._ Though considering their ties to The Cerberus Protocol, he didn’t imagine that would be very difficult to do at all.

A movement to his right reflected in the window he was looking out drew Hargrove’s attention, and he turned his head, looking over at the man with dark hair and glasses who came to a stop beside him. “Doctor Marlowe,” he greeted.

“Chairman,” Marlowe acknowledged him with a nod. “How are you today?”

“Resigned,” Hargrove replied flatly, looking back out the window.

“I see,” Marlowe said. “Hopefully that will change when I give you the good news I’ve brought.”

Hargrove looked over at him, interested. “Go on.”

“The ship should be cleared to depart in the next few hours, according to the engineers working on it,” Marlowe reported.

“Excellent,” Hargrove said, feeling the buzz of frustration in the back of his head begin to subside. “Anything else?”

“Yes, and this is...not so great news, but it’s useful,” Marlowe replied, pulling out the datapad that had been tucked under his arm and tapping it a few times to pull up a window before handing it over to Hargrove.

Hargrove took it and skimmed over the report, frowning slightly. “What am I looking at?” he asked.

“Scans from the Condor our new friend took as she pulled away from _Aria_ to enter slipspace,” Marlowe replied. “She transmitted them to our ship. This information came in about thirty minutes ago.”

“She detected another ship already in slipspace?” Hargrove asked, looking over at Marlowe, wondering why the doctor was wasting his time. “Why _exactly_ did she feel that this was worth informing us about?”

And Marlowe reached over and scrolled the report down slightly. “Because of where it _came_ from, sir.”

And Hargrove narrowed his eyes at the datapad, his mouth forming into a hard line. According to the trajectory report on the ship the mercenary had detected, it had come from the same star system he had been forced to retreat from.

From _Chorus._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So from here on out, I’m going to be alternating between the BGC and the mercs in the order in which the plot happens. So you might wind up seeing a chapter that’s half BGC and half mercs, or 3/4th mercs, or all BCG. Also chapters are going to start getting longer and longer because of this. I thought about dividing up the two groups and alternating chapters with the two of them, but the story is long enough as it is, so like, nah. I’m letting you guys know this because these next few chapters aren’t gonna have a whole lot of the BCG in them (bc not a whole lot happens on Chorus,) so be prepared, I guess.  
> Also fun fact: this entire story was originally going to be from Locus’ perspective, but then I realized how boring that would be and changed it. Because holy hell the Reds and Blues are fun to write.
> 
> Be prepared to hate Dr. Marlowe. He’s an ass.  
> Marz sounds like Peridot from Steven Universe btw. Have fun reading her lines in that voice from now on :3c
> 
> Here are some deets on ONI http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Office_of_Naval_Intelligence  
> I don’t plan on getting SUPER into Halo lore with this faction, but I figure it’s at least worth a mention since it will come up later. It also helped me solidify a few things while writing this chapter. 
> 
> Mexican names can follow the Spanish model of First Name - Middle Name - Father’s Last Name - Mother’s Last Name. I’m not sure how common this is, but it’s a fun little culture thing I found while doing some research for this chapter. The irony of Locus’ middle name is kinda funny imo. 
> 
> Ever heard the phrase “packed in like sardines?” That’s where the title comes from.  
> Locus is feeling like he’s in a very tight spot right now lol. Trapped in an apartment with someone like Fox. Oh dear.
> 
> In which Locus meets both the grandpa friend and the dad friend in one day.  
> Sanchez is a badass. An old badass. But a badass. And he could wreck Locus.  
> Also, be warned that yes, Fox uses a lot of gallows humor.  
> *Whacks Locus with a rolled up newspaper* Stop! Being! A! Negative! Nancy!  
> All downhill from here my ass. Ok Mr. Edgelord.
> 
> Also, warning that someone throws up in the next chapter. It’s not suuuper graphic, but I know some of you might be grossed out. So when you see the name Holtzman, prepare yourself.


	19. Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> :3c

“Here are those key cards, just like you asked for. They should get you anywhere in that building. Just don’t lose them.”

Locus looked around the interior of the dusty pawn shop he and Fox were currently standing in. It was two days since their arrival to Earth. Marz had gotten her a name and a location for someone who could get them into Charon’s database. Now all they had to do was get to them and force them to talk.

Which is why they were in a pawn shop, talking to some skinny stoner who also apparently dabbled in assisting people interested in committing corporate espionage...At least that’s what he had told them. Locus didn’t really care how or why he was able to print off key cards that would give them access to one of Charon’s offices, just as long as they worked.

It was funny. Locus had been here several times before back when he worked as a bounty hunter. The place hadn’t changed one bit. Even the fellow at the register was the same. Ziggy, that was his name, Locus remembered. He wondered if the other man had forgotten his face, however, as he hadn’t said anything indicating otherwise when he and Fox had stepped through the door. Maybe it was for the best.

Fox took the key cards, pocketing one and handing the other to him. “And the payment I sent you went through?” she asked.

“Wouldn’t’ve handed you those cards if it hadn’t,” Ziggy replied.

Fox gave him a look that said “fair enough.”

“Do you mind me asking what you’re planning on doing with those? You know Charon’s facing a _huge_ investigation, right?” Ziggy asked suddenly.

Locus fixed him in a glare, but Fox simply said, “just stay away from the rave at South Point tonight, okay?”

Ziggy let out a little laugh. “Sure thing, man.”

Fox gave him a smile, then turned, nodding at Locus as she brushed past him on her way out. He gave Ziggy one last warning look, then followed her out.

 

* * *

 

Ziggy watched the odd couple get into the car they’d pulled up in and drive away through the shop window, scratching his chin stubble. It was weird. He hadn’t seen that tall, scary-looking guy around for a while. He figured that maybe he’d been killed during a bounty hunting raid with those other two.

Ziggy blinked, and a grin stretched across his face. He pulled his phone out of the pocket of his saggy jeans and punched in a number. “Heyyo, it’s Ziggs!” he exclaimed when the person on the other end of the line picked up. “I just-- Huh? What, nah, _nah,_ man! I got your payment for the guns dude, that’s not what this is about.” He turned and leaned back against the counter, looking up at the weapons that were mounted on the wall behind the register, the grin on his face spreading wider. “You are not gonna _believe_ who just came in here.”

 

* * *

 

“Stupid kids are all gonna be deaf by the time they hit their thirties,” Fox observed, staring out of the windowed elevator shaft at the rave across the street. She turned back to the digital display above the elevator doors. Their target was on the twelfth floor. Seven more floors to go.

She looked over at Locus, who hadn’t said a word since they got on the elevator. He’d been in a weird mood ever since they got the key cards from Ziggy. She wondered if it had something to do with the fact that she’d warned the kid about the rave. Probably not the _best_ call, but it wasn’t like there was anything she could do about it now.

“So,” she said, growing tired of listening to the hum of the elevator and the sound of the rave across the street. In her peripheral, she noticed Locus narrow his eyes, but not look at her. “You wanna get waffles later?” she asked.

Locus glanced at her, and she met his confused look with a hopeful grin. After a moment to consider the request, he sighed and looked away and said, “sure.”

“Sweet,” Fox said, glancing up at the display again. They were close. “Alright, masks on,” she said, taking her sunglasses out of her pocket and putting them on, then pulled the bandana she had tied around her neck up over the bottom half of her face. She pulled her gun out, double-checked it, then took the safety off, holding her finger beside the trigger. Beside her, Locus did the same.

The elevator doors opened with a _ding_ , and the two suddenly found themselves face-to-face with one of the security guards. The man opened his mouth to call out an alarm, but barely got a sound out before Locus punched him in the throat, then grabbed the front of his shirt and dragged him into the elevator, pistol whipping him and knocking him unconscious. Fox quickly hit the button to close the elevator doors, gun at the ready in case they encountered anymore surprises.

Once the door was shut, she turned back and glanced down at the guard before looking up at Locus. “Good reflexes,” she said.

“That was too close,” he replied.

“Neither of us could have seen that coming,” Fox said with a nod. She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

“Ready?” Locus asked.

“Always,” Fox replied, and hit the button to open the elevator doors. “Let’s go for take two.”

The elevator doors opened and they stepped out onto the twelfth floor, quickly creeping across the open space and taking cover behind two server towers. There were rows upon rows of them, and the constant humming and beeping and whirring of them made it difficult to pick out where the rest of the guards were. Which is why Fox had been incredibly pleased to find out that Locus was very good at dealing with security cameras.

She pulled her phone out of her pocket and ran the program on it that would allow her to access the cameras Locus had linked her to. She did a quick scan of the room with them, pinpointing the locations of all the guards. There were ten of them. One stood by the office on the other end of the room where their target was located, and the rest were situated throughout the rows of server towers. One in particular caught her eye. An unsuspecting fellow who was heading right for them.

Fox turned to Locus and hissed, “on your nine.”

He nodded, then turned and rose out of his crouch, readying himself. Not a moment later, the guard stepped out of the row of server towers in front of him, took notice of him, and was promptly delivered a hard blow to the side of the head with the butt of Locus’ gun. Locus caught him before he hit the ground, then dragged him over and propped him up against one of the server towers on the end, out of view, then crept back to his original position, giving Fox a nod.

“That’s one,” she said. Nine more to deal with.

They crept through the rows of servers, relying on the camera view on Fox’s phone to figure out where the guards were. They managed to take out two more, making it a quarter of the way to their target.

Fox locked in on another guard, and readied herself to take him out when he rounded the corner, when he stopped and put his hand to his earpiece. She listened hard, heart sinking when she was able to pick up what the guard on the other end of the line was saying.

“I just found Gene unconscious. Lock down the building and check for intruders!”

Fox glanced back at Locus, who was hugging the opposite wall of server towers, pulled down her bandana, and mouthed, “they know we’re here.”

His expression grew grim and his grip on his gun tightened.

Fox nodded, pulling her bandana back over her face and rose out of her crouch, and as the guard rounded the corner, delivered a swift high-kick to his chin that dropped him like a rock. Even though the guards were on high alert, there was still no point in getting sloppy and giving away their position with a gunshot. Fox grabbed the guard’s ankles and dragged him into the cover of the server tower row she and Locus were in. She went to lean around the corner again, but jumped back when a bullet ricocheted off of the server tower opposite of her.

“I got one of them!”

 _“Shit!”_ Fox hissed, stealing a look at her phone and pinpointing the location of the guard who had fired at her. She glanced back at Locus, who was standing now too, gun aimed and ready. “Two rows over, three ‘o clock,” she whispered.

He nodded, and slinked away.

She looked back at her phone, frowning when she saw another two guards coming towards them. She backtracked down the row of towers and stepped out into the aisle, peering cautiously around the corner of every row until she finally found the two guards. A gunshot in the direction Locus had headed drew both of their attention, and Fox stole the opportunity to lean around the corner and put a bullet through the taller one’s head. The shorter one cursed and ducked behind cover. Fox took a breath and waited, and when he leaned out again to check if she was still there, fired, hitting him right in the cheekbone and dropping him into a puddle of his companion’s blood.

“How we looking?” Fox asked over comms.

“Good. We have two more headed our way.”

Fox froze when she heard the elevator ding from somewhere behind her. She slid into cover and peered around the corner. “No,” she said, “we have seven. Five more just stepped off the elevator with assault rifles.” She had barely finished talking when a red alarm light flared overhead. “Damnit.”

“Keep your head down. I’ll take care of these two.”

“Roger that. Be quick,” Fox muttered. She watched on her phone as the five spread out among the rows of server towers and headed towards her position. A gunshot behind her put them all on alert, and another one had them hugging the towers for cover. Fox watched as one of them made his way down the row to her right, a bead of sweat rolling down the side of her face. She drew in a deep breath, then rounded the corner and put a bullet into the guard’s chest and another through his head.

“If you’re going to come help, _now_ would be the time,” she hissed to Locus over comms.

“On my way.”

Fox crept down the row, leaning out to check if the aisle was clear, and threw herself back when a spray of bullets was fired in her direction.

“Over here!” the guard shouted.

There was another gunshot, followed by more submachine gun fire and shouting. Fox raised her gun and leaned around the corner, taking her chances. She caught the guard who had fired at her before in the shoulder, then charged and drove her elbow into his chin, then landed a hard kick right to his crotch for good measure. When he buckled over, she caught him and forced him back upright, eyes on the guard that had emerged from the row behind him and had already squeezed the trigger.

The guard Fox was holding took the brunt of the bullets, and by the time his teammate realized what he was doing and stopped firing, he was dead on the ground, and Fox was charging him. She drove her shoulder into his sternum, winding him, then landed a hard hit to his throat that put him drooling on the ground.

Movement to her left drew her attention, and she ducked right as a single gunshot ripped through the room. Fox watched as the guard who had ambushed her hit the ground with a bullet hole through his head, and looked up to see Locus standing behind him. “Thanks,” she said, drawing herself upright and brushing herself off.

“Stay focused. That was too close,” he growled.

“There’s only two of us. We can only do so much,” Fox said as she brushed past him, eyes on her phone. The guard who had been outside of the target’s office was still there, coiled tighter than a bedspring, gun ready. “We’ve got one Tango left. Target’s office. Stay sharp.”

They made their way towards the office, stopping short once it and the guard were in view and taking cover. Fox watched him for a moment, deciding on the best approach. The guard had literally no cover and was just hugging the wall of the office by the door with his gun ready. This would be easy. “I got this one,” she said, leaning out, taking aim, and pulling the trigger. The blood splatter from the man’s head slicked the row of glass windows looking into the office. “Alright, we’re good. Let’s get this done before more show up,” Fox said, reloading and holstering her weapon before starting towards the office with Locus on her heels.

Once they reached the office, Locus kicked the door in, and scanned the room for hostiles, gun raised. When he found none, he stepped in, and Fox did the same.

“Marcus Gleeson? Knock, _knock!_ I know you’re in here,” Fox said, looking towards the desk.

“Oh god, don’t shoot!” came the terrified reply from under said desk.

Fox exchanged a look with Locus, then stepped up to the desk, leaning against it. She took note of the picture he had framed next to a mug filled with pens. Two girls, looking to be around seven to ten years old. Twins. How cute. “We’re not going to shoot you, Gleeson. We _just_ want to talk.”

“Y-you killed all those guards!”

“Not _all_ of them,” Fox said, “just most. Some of them just got knocked out. No sense in wasting a bullet when you don’t have to, right?”

Gleeson didn’t reply, but Fox heard him let out a small whimper.

She sighed, growing impatient. “Alright, listen, we can do this the easy way, which involves you coming out on your own. _Or_ , we can do this the hard way, in which my partner and I drag you out. It’s up to you.”

Gleeson was silent for a moment longer, then finally said, “okay, okay. I’m coming out. Just please don’t shoot!”

“Already said we wouldn’t, cupcake,” Fox said, watching as the man crawled out from under his desk and stumbled back against the wall, trembling like a leaf in a storm.

“Y-you’re dressed like guards!”

“We know, hon. That’s how we got in here.”

Gleeson swallowed hard, eyes darting towards the door.

“Don’t even think about it,” Fox warned, taking a mental note of the lack of a wedding ring on his finger.

Gleeson looked back at her, sweat rolling down his red face. “Wh-who are you people?!”

Fox drew in a breath, a small smile on her face under her mask. “I’m Fox,” she said, then jerked a thumb back over her shoulder towards Locus, “and this is Locus. And we’re the good guys.”

 

* * *

 

Waffles were a good call, come to find out. Though Locus didn’t have much of an appetite after the fight earlier, it was at the very least a nice change of pace.

After they had cornered Gleeson in his office, they had knocked him out, and he’d slung the shorter man over his shoulder. Both he and Fox had taken their masks and gloves off and stowed them away, then made their way down to the ground level, slipping out of the back door and loading Gleeson into the trunk of their car and driving off, right as the telltale flash of blue and red police lights rounded the corner at the end of the block. It had been close, and sloppy, but they had pulled it off.

But there was still something wrong.

When they had pulled out of the building’s parking garage, Locus had noticed a black car sitting against the curb outside of the office building. He hadn’t had time to see who was driving it, but there was something off about the whole situation. He could have sworn he knew that car.

He looked over as the waitress placed a plate of waffles in front of Fox, who had a big grin on her face.

“You sure you don’t want anything, sweetheart?”

Locus looked over at the waitress. “I’m fine.”

“Alright,” she said with a smile. “Well, if you change your mind, just give me a holler!” And with that, she walked away.

Locus looked back at Fox, who was digging into her food.

“You don’t know what you’re missing here,” she said in between bites.

“I’m not hungry,” he replied.

“Neither am I. I just wanted waffles,” Fox shrugged. Then she pulled out her phone and made a face at whatever was on it, stuffed it back into her pocket, then continued working on her meal.

Locus just shook his head tiredly and stared out the window, watching the flickering of the bulb in one of the light poles in the parking lot. He thought about bringing up the car, but figured that it wasn’t worth it. That opinion changed very quickly when he followed the beam of light the light pole cast, and saw it parked just out of its reach, headlights off. He narrowed his eyes at it, certain it was the same car that had been parked outside of the office building. They’d been followed.

“What’cha lookin’ at, champ?”

Locus looked back at Fox, who had mowed through half of her waffles by now. “There’s a car out there that was parked outside of the office building when we left it. It followed us.”

Fox looked unconcerned, taking a bite of her waffle and chewing and swallowing it before speaking again. “Staring at it won’t make the problem go away.”

“This could be serious.”

“I’m sure it is,” Fox said, still unfazed. “But there’s nothing we can do about it right now. It’s here. We’re going to have to deal with it. But right now, I’m going to finish these waffles.”

And Locus found himself anxiously waiting as she did so. The waitress came and dropped off their bill, which Fox insisted on picking up, and then they readied to go.

Before they stepped out of the dinky little diner, Fox hissed under her breath, “asshole parked right in front of us. Keep sharp, but play it cool. They probably know we’re onto them, but I want you to act like you don’t know that. I’ll go around back and try to cut them off. Whatever happens, don’t shoot right away. I want to know what their deal is.”

Locus nodded. It was a simple ambush tactic, and the fact that the diner was right next to a bar meant that the parking lot was filled with cars that would provide extra cover if things went south. He followed Fox out of the diner and watched out of the corner of his eye as she disappeared amongst the rows of vehicles. He headed towards her car, eyes locked on the one parked in front of it, hand ready to grab his gun at the slightest sign of danger.

He entered the empty space next to Fox’s car slowly, looking around. The car ahead was empty, and Fox was nowhere to be found. Something was very wrong here. He started to reach for his gun, when the headlights of the vehicle suddenly flared to life.

Locus’ hand flew to his gun and threw an arm up to try to shield his watering eyes. He barely had his weapon drawn when a figure stepped in front of the lights holding what looked like a shotgun. Without hesitation, they cocked the weapon and pointed it at him, and not a second later, the lights on the car went out.

Locus froze, aware that any sudden movement could get him shot, and blinked several times to try to clear the blotches of light from his eyes. The second his vision cleared enough for him to make out the face of the person standing in front of him, he found himself staring in disbelief, tension spiking through his shoulders. And in a low growl that carried far more surprise than he would have liked it to, he said, _“Wu?”_

 _“Ortez,”_ Siris spat back, eyes narrowed.

“Fox!” Locus sucked in a breath when he heard Fox shout her name out suddenly, and looked over to see her seated on the roof of the car next to Siris, her pistol aimed at his temple. Siris slowly turned his head towards her, the realization that he’d been ambushed showing on his face.

“And now that we’ve all been introduced to each other,” Fox continued, her voice going from pleasant to a threatening growl in an instant, “how about you point that gun of yours away from my _partner?”_

Siris met her gaze evenly, and Locus saw his finger hesitate against the trigger. Fox must have noticed it too, because she flipped off her safety and said, “try it. I _promise_ I’m faster.”

Siris held her stare for a moment longer, then flipped the safety back on without taking his eyes off of her, and set the gun down on the ground.

“Very good,” Fox said, her voice becoming a touch more pleasant. “Now be a dear and kick it towards our friend there.”

Siris begrudgingly did as he was told, the shotgun skittering to a stop just short of Locus’ feet. Locus quickly picked it up and turned it on Siris, who fixed him in a glare when he saw him do so.

Beside him, Fox let out a sigh and flipped the safety of her gun back on. Then she looked over at Siris and said, “alright, Purple, start talking; who are you? How do you two know each other? And what’s your beef with my boy?”

Locus glanced over at Fox before looking back at Siris, who still held him in a glare. He opted to give it right back.

Siris finally looked away from him, towards Fox, his defiant expression giving way to one of reluctant defeat. “My name’s Mason Wu. However, your _friend_ here knew me as Siris during missions back in the day.”

Fox’s face lit up. “Oh, so _you’re_ Siris! Huh. Funny they never put a description of you in Sunshine’s file.” She jerked her head in Locus’ direction

So Siris _was_ in his file. Interesting. Locus wondered what else was in there that Fox had learned.

“File?” Siris asked, glancing at Locus.

“Tells me everything I need to know about a person. Such as the fact that the two of you were bounty hunters once upon a time,” Fox replied. “Now what’s your _beef?”_

Siris let out a huffy sigh and continued, looking back towards Locus. “I heard he was in the area and wanted an explanation.”

“For?” Fox asked, raising an eyebrow.

“For _shooting me in the chest_ and leaving me for _dead_ before running off with _Felix_ on some _mission_ in another _star system,”_ Siris spat, narrowing his eyes.

Locus bristled. “I _didn’t_ shoot you,” he growled.

“Really? Because I’ve got a scar that proves otherwise!” Siris snapped back.

“It wasn’t--” Locus cut off, thinking hard, trying to put it all into words. “Felix had the gun. I was _trying_ to stop him from pulling the trigger, but it went off,” he explained. _“None_ of that was supposed to happen.”

Siris held his gaze coldly for a moment, then took in a deep breath, closing his eyes. When he opened them again, his expression was just a little less hostile. “And yet you still left me to bleed out,” he said in a voice that held more disappointment than actual anger.

It still stung all the same. Locus sighed, slowly lowering the shotgun. “I thought you were dead,” he admitted. “When you went over the bridge…”

Siris looked away, nodding slightly to himself. Then he turned his eyes back towards Locus. “And where _is_ Felix, anyways?” he asked, suspicion in his voice.

Locus looked away. “He’s dead.” He heard Siris suck in a breath, and when he looked back at him, the glare had returned.

“Did you kill him?” Siris asked.

“No.”

And Siris leaned back slightly, looking, much to Locus’ surprise, like he believed him. “What happened?”

“It’s a long story.”

“So how about we save it for later, because Gleeson’s going to be waking up soon, and we can’t be in a public space when that happens,” Fox spoke up.

Locus looked over at her, then back to Siris. “What are we going to do about him?”

Fox waved her hand dismissively and hopped off of the car, holstering her gun as she walked past. “Oh, he’s coming with us!”

Siris stared at her. “Are you going to kill me?”

“Oh, don’t be silly!” Fox replied, opening up the door to the passenger’s side of her car and pulling a roll of duct tape out of the glove box. “If I wanted you dead, I wouldn’t have wasted my time on conversation.” She walked back over to him and stopped in front of him. “Now hold out your wrists.”

Siris let out a frustrated sigh and did as he was told, watching defeatedly as she duct taped his wrists together. “So then what _are_ you going to do?”

“Have a talk. Probably over coffee. But we gotta deal with a mark first, so I hope you don’t mind waiting,” Fox explained, opening up the backseat door behind the passenger’s side and gesturing for him to get in.

Locus waited until he did so, and Fox had shut the door, before he got in on the passenger’s side. Fox hopped in next to him and started the car, glancing up at the rear view mirror to catch Siris’ gaze. “You all good back there?”

“Just drive,” Siris replied.

“Touchy,” Fox said flatly, pulled out of the parking space, and drove out of the lot. They were only on the road for a short while before the sound of muffled yelling and banging on the trunk walls alerted them to the fact that Gleeson had woken up.

“Tell me that isn’t Gleeson,” Siris said.

“Okay,” Fox replied, and said nothing.

Looking back, Locus caught the glare Siris fixed her in. “It’s Gleeson,” he said, giving Fox a look.

“What? He told me not to tell him,” Fox replied.

Gleeson calmed down by the time they hit the highway. They stayed on it for a short while before exiting in the industrial area. Fox navigated them through the maze of buildings, finally pulling into an empty construction area and parking the car.

Locus followed Fox out, looking at her strangely when she walked around and opened Siris’ door, saying, “how about some fresh air?”

Siris gave her a wary look, and got out of the car as well.

Locus walked over and popped the trunk, revealing a frightened Gleeson, his head covered with a black fabric bag and his wrists and ankles duct taped together. He pulled the man out and dragged him away from the car, dropping him back onto the gravel. He stepped back, looking over when he heard Fox approach.

“You keep an eye on your friend,” she said, stopping beside him, eyes on Gleeson. “And let me do the talking.”

Locus gave her a nod, walking back over towards Siris, who was watching them with wary interest. He stopped beside the other man and turned back towards Fox, who had put her sunglasses, bandana, and gloves back on. He crossed his arms and let out a long sigh. Hopefully this wouldn’t take too long.

 

* * *

 

Gleeson started blubbering the second Fox took the bag off his head. She let him. The industrial area was riddled with crime anyways, and it wasn’t like there was anyone around to hear him at this time of night. Once Gleeson had calmed down, she spoke up. “Here’s how this is going to go; you’re going to give me the keys to Charon’s networks.”

Gleeson gave her a scared look, but then seemed to find something funny, as his face broke into a sort of desperate grin. “By now, corporate knows that someone was after something in that building. They’ll have changed all their passwords!”

Fox made a _tsk_ _tsk_ sound, shaking her head as she crouched down in front of him, forearms resting on her thighs. “Did you _really_ think I didn’t do my research? We _both_ know that’s not true. See, with this whole investigation going on, they have to let the U.N.S.C. know when they’re going to change their keys. And getting approval for that is _such_ a pain, which means that they wouldn’t bother changing them until they know which ones are being threatened.”

Gleeson let out a quiet “oh” and seemed to sink into himself. “Th-that doesn’t mean I’m going to give them to you! I’m n-not someone you can b-bully into submission!”

Fox sighed. “Look, I _really_ don’t want to have to get violent with you. You’re just a pencil-pushing desk jockey who slouches in front of a computer all day. You’re hardly a threat.” Her voice grew firm, “so you should start thinking about what’s going to happen to those two little girls of yours if I _do._ ”

Any remaining color in Gleeson’s face drained when Fox mentioned his daughters. “H-how do you know about my girls?”

Fox tilted her head slightly. “Word of advice,” she began, “if you’re going to work for a company that profits off of genocide, and you have something you love, don’t have it in a picture frame sitting on your desk.”

“Don’t hurt them!”

“Relax, friend. I’m not going to hurt your kids,” Fox replied smoothly. “But with all the human trafficking going on in this city through the foster care system...I’m sure _someone_ will if you don’t start talking.”

Gleeson’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he gulped. “Okay. Okay. I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

 _“That’s_ better!” Fox exclaimed. She pulled out her phone and opened a blank document on it. “I’m ready whenever you are.”

“Okay,” Gleeson said, then proceeded to list off the network keys.

Once he was done, Fox saved the document and pocketed her phone, eyes never leaving him. “Thank you for your cooperation,” she said in a falsely sweet voice.

“Wh-what happens now?” Gleeson stammered. “Are- are y-you going to k-kill me?”

“No, no. You’ve been helpful,” Fox said, holstering her gun. She pulled out a knife and began sawing at the duct tape around Gleeson’s ankles, freeing him. _“Now,_ you’re going to go home, hug your kids, tell them how much you love them, then pack up all your shit and take them to Disney World, because the _last_ place you’re gonna want to be when your boss catches wind of this is _here._ Got it?”

Gleeson gave her a frightened nod.

“Good,” Fox said, sheathing her knife on her hip before standing and brushing her knees off. She turned back to where Locus was leaning against the side of the car with Siris standing beside him. Now came the less fun part. She headed back towards them, ignoring the sound of Gleeson scrambling to his feet and hightailing it in the opposite direction.

“That was easy,” she said when she reached them, pulling off her mask and gloves and looking pointedly at Siris, sizing him up. He seemed fairly compliant now, with the knowledge that they didn’t plan on killing him. But he definitely wasn’t happy. Fox didn’t blame him, but she was also about to make him much, much more unhappy than he already was. She looked over at Locus and asked, “mind doing me a favor?”

He nodded.

“Great,” she replied, then tossed him the bag they had used to cover Gleeson’s head and nodded at Siris. “Blindfold him.” She heard Siris draw in a hissing breath between his teeth and looked back at him. He had her fixed in a glare. “Sorry,” she said, and meant it. “It’s just better that you don’t know where the safehouse is. You understand, yeah?”

Siris narrowed his eyes at her, then looked away.

Fox walked around and got in on the driver’s side, looking over as Siris got in, head covered by the bag. Locus shut his door, then got in on the passenger’s side. “Are we really doing this?” he asked.

“It’ll be worth it,” she replied, giving him what she hoped was a reassuring smile, then started the car and pulled out of the lot.

 

* * *

 

Siris blinked when the bag was pulled off his head, trying to adjust his eyes to the light. He looked over when Locus walked past the couch he was seated on and went to lean up against a bookcase built into the wall with a big TV next to it. Wait, a _TV?_

He looked around, and quickly came to the realization that he was in someone’s _house._ Footsteps behind him alerted him to someone’s approach, and he looked back over his shoulder, spotting Fox approaching with a combat knife in her hand. Sucking in a breath, he tensed, planting both feet firmly on the floor, ready to spring if she tried anything.

She took notice of his body language, and said, “relax, I’m just going to cut off that duct tape.”

Siris stared at her, then slowly relaxed. She stepped in front of him, and he held his wrists up, watching wordlessly as she sawed through the duct tape, then yanked it off, balling it into a wad and placing it on the coffee table as she walked around it. She put the knife back into its sheath on her belt, then took a seat in the armchair opposite him.

Siris watched her for a moment, then looked over at Locus, who met his gaze evenly. Siris narrowed his eyes at him, then looked back to Fox. “Well?”

Fox gestured at him with her hand. _“Well?”_

Growing impatient, Siris frowned at her. “Why am I here?”

“Because we’re having story time, remember?” Fox replied, grinning.

Of course he remembered, but no one was _saying anything!_ Siris looked back at Locus. “If you have something to say, you should say it.”

Locus held his gaze for a moment longer, then let out a long sigh.

“Take your time,” Fox said, looking up at him.

He glanced at her, then back to Siris, then spoke. “After you were shot, we picked up a few odd jobs in several different systems. The first few were...similar to the ones we took before we left Earth. Messy, but they paid well. Eventually they got worse, but...I had nowhere else to go. Felix and I argued. Our last job was supposed to be _the_ last before we headed back to this system. But…”

He continued, and Siris listened with growing horror and shock as he learned about the job they took from Charon, and the events that played out on Chorus. Locus explained Felix’s death, and Siris wished he could feel more surprise than he did. Felix had always been...too easy-going about killing. Too manipulative. Too cruel. It was no wonder he had died the way he did. But that was still only _half_ of the problem.

“So let me get this straight,” Siris said when Locus had finished. “You ignore me when I tell you that the job Felix got out of this system was dirty, and you go anyways. You get hired by the same sort of people I warned you two about. You wind up starting a _civil-fucking-war_ that leaves _thousands_ of people dead. And it isn’t until after _all_ of that is finished that you take a good look at yourself and say ‘hey, I’m a shitty human being’? What the everloving _fuck_ , Sam?!” Siris snarled. “I was in the hospital for _weeks_ with Meg and Olivia worried out of their fucking _minds_ while you and Gates were off committing--what-- _genocide?!”_

“It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this,” Locus replied, looking both tired and frustrated at the same time. “I’m trying to make things right.”

“Oh,” Siris said, throwing his hands up and nodding sarcastically. “Oh, you’re making things _right?”_ He leaned forward, a snarl on his face, and asked, “how the fuck are you going to make this right, Ortez? _Thousands_ of _people_ are _dead!”_

Before Locus had the chance to speak up, Fox cleared her throat, and Siris slid his gaze towards her, straightening his back up. “If you don’t mind me interjecting; the way he was planning about...atoning...for all that nonsense was by helping me take down the assholes who hired him in the first place.”

Siris narrowed his eyes at her. Locus hadn’t mentioned exactly where she came into play. “Oh yeah?”

Fox nodded. “See, after he had a mini existential crisis...or whatever...and realized that he was being a total _ass_ , he went to try to fix shit. But then he crashed on my moon, wound up helping me and a ragtag bunch of Sim Troopers and Freelancers beat up Charon’s prized AI, then agreed to work with the lady in charge of the whole army situation down on Chorus. That’s General Kimball, by the way. She decided to pair him with me because she trusts me a little more, for obvious reasons, and after we stopped _The Staff of Charon,_ Hargrove’s ship, she sent us here to fuck up the chairman’s shit even more and help with the investigation so we could bring him to justice.”

Siris stared at her, thinking hard. It was…certainly an interesting situation. The fact that after all of that, this General Kimball was still willing to put enough faith in Locus to send him and his new partner to Earth to help was… a gamble. He knew Locus would get the job done. That had always been his personality. Receive orders and execute. Which was what undoubtedly allowed Felix to convince him to take Charon’s job in the first place, he realized. But _Fox._ He knew _nothing_ about her aside from the fact that she was incredibly stealthy and had some experience with combat and...persuasion. For all he knew, she could be just as dangerous as Felix had been, if not more.

“You’re having a hell of a face journey over there.”

Siris blinked when Fox spoke up, noting she had shifted her position and now leaned forward with her chin propped up against her hands. “You’re here to fight Charon?” he asked.

“Yup.”

“Just the two of you?”

“For now,” Fox replied.

“And exactly _what_ is your plan?”

Fox leaned back, crossing her legs. “Hargrove’s supporters and friends are en route here. Now that we have access to the database on their network, we can pinpoint the ones who will give him the most help. For example, the corrupt officials of the U.N.S.C. that he’s undoubtedly going to try to buy off,” she explained.

Which explained why they weren’t just leaving it up to the U.N.S.C. to handle, Siris realized. “I understand why _he_ might want Charon to go down,” he said, nodding in Locus’ direction. “But why are _you_ involved?”

“Charon killed my friends,” Fox replied, her tone suddenly serious. “I want Hargrove to burn for what he did. And this is the best way to make sure that happens.”

So it _was_ personal. Siris had seen the broadcast regarding the chairman’s corruption, and had been following the news stories about the investigation, so he had an idea of what the two of them were up against. It seemed strange to him, however, that this...General Kimball… would only send two people down to deal with Hargrove’s supporters. He’d be a liar if he denied that he was interested in the direction their operation was headed. But he needed more information before he could decide how to feel about all of it. “Just the two of you aren’t going to last very long,” he said, shaking his head for emphasis.

And the grin that appeared on Fox’s face made his heart sink a little. “Well, that’s where _you_ come in!” she said.

Siris groaned inwardly. He set himself up for this one. “You’re offering me a job?” he asked flatly.

“Shit, why not? I mean, you do bounty hunting stuff, right? Or did. Or... _whatever.”_ Fox waved her hand dismissively, then got back on track. “Point is, you have a set of skills that could help us.”

“Listen, I’m flattered, really,” Siris said disingenuously, side-eyeing Locus for a second before looking back at Fox, “but the job I already have is dangerous enough. And I’ve got too much to lose as it is if one of your targets decides to retaliate.”

“Meg and Olivia, you mean?” Fox asked.

Siris’ heart skipped a beat, and for a second, he forgot that he’d even mentioned them. He fixed Fox in a grim stare, deciding that his best bet was to simply be honest to try to get himself out of this situation. “I’ve already had a handful of close calls over the past few years. Ask him. He knows,” he said, nodding in Locus’ direction.

Fox glanced over at him too and he gave her a nod. She looked back towards Siris, and he could tell she was thinking hard about what she wanted to say next. “What if I told you that I have access to an AI that could keep your family safe if something went wrong?”

 _Okay, new playing card. Be careful, Mason._ “An AI?” Siris asked slowly.

 _“I hope you’re not talking about me while I’m in the room with you,”_ said a new voice suddenly that seemed to come from somewhere in the ceiling. Siris looked up and spotted what looked like a speaker near the overhead light fixtures.

“Who is that?” he asked, looking back towards Fox, who he realized with annoyance had a self-satisfied smile on her face.

 _“That_ is Marz,” Fox replied. “She’s one of the U.N.S.C.’s largest metastabilized Al’s, and she overlooks their entire database, which contains information on every single human being, colony planet, space station, space _ship_ , vehicle, etcetera, etcetera. If you want it, she has it.”

Siris stared at her quizzically. There were about a million questions floating in his head right now. The main two being; how on earth she was able to get this AI in the first place, and what it had to do with _any_ of what he had just mentioned? “So...let me get this straight,” he began, putting up his hands for emphasis. “You have one of the U.N.S.C.’s AI just... _sitting_ in your house?”

“Well, my father built her, so...I get special privileges. Plus I’m the only person who can really run maintenance on her, so it helps having her around to let me know if she needs it,” Fox replied.

Siris blinked at her several times, trying to process this. It occurred to him that he was sitting in a room with someone who probably had more authority and power than he was used to dealing with. “Okay,” he said slowly, “and exactly _what_ can she do to protect my family?”

Fox shrugged. “Theoretically speaking, I could add her to what we’ve dubbed ‘The Fallout List’,” she said, making quotations in the air with her fingers. “Basically it’s a list of family members, friends, spouses, colleagues, whatever, that all the U.N.S.C. officials use to protect the people they care about. So if something happens to one of _them,_ and it’s suspected that the people they love could get hurt because of it, the protocol relocates said loved ones to a safehouse...usually somewhere across the country, or in extreme cases...somewhere like India, or something.”

“And you have the authority to do that?” Siris asked dubiously, glancing up at Locus. Judging by his expression, this was the first time he was hearing about this too. Not that he really had anyone who needed protection.

“In maybe like a week or so, yeah,” Fox replied.

Okay, so that was... _something._ But it didn’t leave him convinced. There were still a lot of holes that needed to be filled. And he had a feeling that the grass on her side wasn’t as green as she was advertising. Siris leaned forward and cupped a hand around his mouth, thinking hard.

“How’s this,” Fox said, drawing his attention, “your starting pay is around fifty grand. Once I get the feel that you’ll be sticking around, I’ll bump it up another fifty. That way you can get your wife, girlfriend, daughter, sister, niece, _whatever,_ some nice stuff. Maybe fix the shingling on your roof, or whatever the fuck. Get a new car. Maybe some nice life insurance. Whatever you want.”

Siris stared at her. _A hundred-thousand credits_. He wondered if she knew that bounty hunting the past year and a half had been rough. Or that he wasn’t getting as many jobs that were paying nearly as well as he needed them to. Or that the medical costs for Meg’s mother were draining their funds. That kind of money could be a game changer. That kind of money would make their lives so, so much easier. “What do you do for a day job?” he asked Fox.

She laughed. “Nothing! I inherited most of the money from my parents. Dad was a big entrepreneur, and when the U.N.S.C. bought his AI, he made bank. Right now, I’m worth about twenty-six billion. Give or take.”

Siris blinked slowly, then looked over at Locus, who shrugged at him. Siris returned his gaze to Fox, unable to keep the astonishment off of his face. At least the money was clean, it sounded like. He had never been a fan of blood money, even if some of his own fit the description. “You really want me on your team, don’t you?” he asked finally.

“You’d be a big help!” Fox nodded.

“I…” Siris trailed off. This wasn’t a choice that he could make on his own. He needed to talk to Meg. Needed to sort this out. “How dangerous are the missions you’ll be going on?”

“Way more intense than your usual bounty hunter run, but not as viscerally awful as some of the shit that happened in the Great War,” Fox replied.

“That’s a big grey zone,” Siris said.

“Expect them to be around the same stress level as the time we dealt with Lozano,” Locus spoke up.

Well that wasn’t...amazing. But they had survived. And it sounded like Fox was planning on trying to build a competent team, which would improve their odds even more. Siris looked back at Fox, sighed, then said, “I’ll think about it.”

The corner of Fox’s mouth twitched upright. She pulled a wallet out of her back pocket and flipped through it, producing a business card, which she handed to him. Siris noted the fact that the name on the card read “Pepper Matsukaze”. Likely her real name. Good information to have. He’d look her up later.

“When you’ve made up your mind, call that number at the bottom,” Fox said.

Siris nodded and pocketed the card. “So what now?” he asked after a moment of silence.

“Now,” Fox said, rising out of the armchair and straightening out her shirt, “I’m going to drive you back to that diner to get your car. Which means you need to be blindfolded until we’re back on the highway. Sorry.” She held out her hand, and Locus placed the black fabric bag in it, which she then tossed to Siris. “I’ll let you do the honors,” she said.

“Thanks,” he replied flatly, and put it on.

 

* * *

 

“Really? Well, I’m glad to hear it! I’ll give you a call in a day or so with a location, sound good? Alright. You take care now. Bye, bye!”

Siris listened as Fox finished chatting on the phone. It sounded like she stuck it in the cupholder when she was done, but he wasn’t sure until he heard it vibrate once against something to his left.

“You can take that off now,” she said suddenly.

Siris let out a small sigh of relief and pulled the bag off, folding it and placing it next to her phone which was exactly where he thought it was in the middle console. He wondered who she had been talking to, but decided it wasn’t his place to ask.

“That was a kid named Danny Grace. Former cop. I offered him a job as a driver for us, and he just accepted,” Fox explained.

Okay, so that made more sense. At first, Siris had thought she was talking to family, but some of her wording had been a bit off. “Can he fight?”

“Yeah, but he doesn’t like guns, so I’m keeping him in his comfort zone for right now,” Fox replied. “Speaking of which, I should probably get Marz on finding me some candidates.” Siris watched as she hit a button on her steering wheel, and the touch screen in the dashboard over the center console turned blue with a geometric logo in the middle of it.

 _“Ask, and you shall receive,”_ Marz said, her voice coming out of the speakers.

“Could I get you to look through the database for possible candidates for our operation?”

_“It might take me awhile to get back to you, due to your current limited access. I’m going to have to be sneaky about this.”_

“Yeah, yeah. If it gets to be a problem, reach out to Charlie or Abigale and see if they can get past the restrictions.”

 _“Better go in for that retinal scan update soon,”_ Marz mused, then asked _“What are the search parameters?”_

“Maximum of five candidates. Combat experience, preferably from the Great War. Anyone with an annual income of less than fifty grand a year. Driver’s license. Local to Massachusetts. Have bad history with either the U.N.S.C. _or_ Charon. Or both. Whatever. Capable of being licensed for a weapon if they haven’t been already. No record of alcohol or drug addiction. Can’t be a serial killer, pedophile, rapist, or the like, obviously. And no major surgeries or mental facility visits in the past year, because lord knows they need the recovery time more than they need what we’ll be throwing them at,” Fox said.

Siris listened closely taking a mental note of the parameters. So _these_ were the sort of people he’d be working with. They sounded an awful lot like the sorts he would often partner up with when pursuing a bounty. Which meant that he could handle them.

_“Alright. Do you have any specific skills you would like me to check for as well?”_

“As far as the individual goes, I’d like someone with demolition skills, someone who can pilot, preferably U.N.S.C.-grade aircrafts; and someone skilled in engineering. I’d like all of them to have the basic skill set of a Marine, however,” Fox replied.

 _“Roger that. I’ll push it and see if I can have a list together for you by the time you get back,”_ Marz said, then signed off, the touch screen going black again.

Siris watched as Fox tapped her fingers against the steering wheel, her eyes on the road. “So how long have you known Sam?” he asked.

Fox kept her eyes forward. “Few months,” she replied. “Long enough to know that he’s going to need some help pulling himself up from rock-bottom.”

 _That_ was an understatement. In the past few hours he’d spent in Locus’ presence, Siris had determined that he was in a far worse place mentally than he had been before he’d left Earth. “Why’d you get paired with him, then? It sounded like you’re looking for teammates who are...stable.”

Fox glanced at him from the corner of her eye. “When I hit the end of my rope, I relied on the kindness of strangers to throw me a new one. He’s in the same boat I was, and while I’m not saying that he _deserved_ a second chance, he still got one. And as the objective third party in the situation, I think I’m the best person to help him.”

“And what exactly is in it for you?”

This time, Fox turned her head to glare at him for a moment before looking back at the road. “Nothing. That’s not how I work,” she said pointedly. “My job is to help people, so that’s what I do. And if I get something back for it, great. If not, oh well. I wasn’t doing it for the reward anyways.”

Okay, point made. “Sorry,” Siris said, realizing he had hit a nerve.

Fox just nodded and fell silent for a while, eyes on the mostly empty highway ahead. “You were friends once, weren’t you?” she asked suddenly.

Siris blinked. “You...could say that.”

“Do you still care about him?”

Siris got the sense that she thought she knew the answer. Which would have been great, if she had shared it with him. Because truth was, _he_ didn’t even know. Yes, Locus had been his partner and sort of friend for a number of years. But then the incident with him and Felix had happened, and he’d been shot. And then the guy came back years later with news that he started a civil war for profit. “I…”

“Because the way you yelled at him earlier made it sound like you do,” Fox continued.

Siris stared at her, suddenly uncertain as to whether or not he wanted to continue this conversation. “What makes you say that?”

“Well...if you didn’t care, you wouldn’t have been disappointed,” Fox replied. “Which makes me think that you _do_ care, but just aren’t sure about whether you want to voice it or not because of all the pain and frustration you’ve been through recently.”

“Why does it matter?” Siris asked, growing irritated.

“Because A) if you’re going to work with us, there can’t be any animosity between the two of you. You’re going to have to figure your shit out so you can have each other’s backs. And B) I think having someone around that he trusts way more than me would help him out a whole lot,” Fox replied. She glanced over at him again, then continued. “For the record, I know that you were hurt, and I know that you’re upset about it and probably not really eager to trust him again. And that’s totally okay. I’ve been in your shoes. It sucks. But know that as long as I’m around, nothing’s going to backfire on you, or your family, for that matter. He _does_ want to change, and that’s why he’s here, but if you aren’t comfortable being a part of it, you don’t have to stick around.”

That was… a nice sentiment. One that Siris honestly had no idea how to reply to. He turned his head and stared out the window, the gears in his head turning. The pros of working with the two of them heavily outweighed the cons. And he’d worked with Locus before, and even if the situation was completely different now, he was still roughly the same person that he had been when he left. Albeit with the weight of a metric fuck-ton of terrible decisions on his shoulders. “It shouldn’t be a problem,” he replied. “But like I said, I’ll think about it.”

Fox nodded, seeming satisfied with his answer. “Thanks,” she said. “I think it would mean a lot to him if you got onboard.”

Siris just sighed and watched as they pulled off onto an exit. He could see the diner from here. Fox entered the parking lot and parked next to his car, getting out when he did.

“You take care, now, okay?” she said as he got into his car.

He simply gave her a nod, put the key in the ignition, stepped on the gas, and pulled away. Him and Meg had a _lot_ to talk about when he got home.

 

* * *

 

While Fox was gone Locus took a shower and changed into fresh clothes. It was the least he could do to keep his mind from running in circles. The fact that Siris was alive and well combined with Fox’s apparent interest in adding him to their team was...stressful. He’d spent the past few months getting himself ready to deal with all of his problems, but this was one that he _hadn’t_ been ready to face. _Es lo que es,_ as Fox would say.

With a sigh, he pulled his hair back into a ponytail and tossed the outfit he’d been wearing earlier into the hamper next to the bathroom door on his way by, then stepped out into the hall. A glow at the end of it piqued his interest, and he followed it, stepping out into the living space and noticing the wall of projected images hovering above the kitchen island. He got closer, and realized that it was a row of five tall boxes, each with the image of someone’s face at the top of them, with their names directly underneath. Locus looked at all of them, trying to see if he knew any of them somehow. Tyler Gonzalez, Sujan Florence, Henry Davis, Joss Tanner, Dana Collins...who _were_ these people? “Marz, what is this?” he asked.

 _“Candidates for your possible teammates,”_ Marz replied. _“Pepper sent me some parameters while she was driving.”_

Huh. That would explain all the information under their names. He read over all of them, figuring it would be good to at least know a bit about them if they were going to be his teammates. Tyler was a former soldier who was born in New Jersey and stationed on a colony planet as a demolition expert during the war. Sujan had engineering experience and an impressive number of confirmed Insurrectionist kills. Henry piloted Pelicans. Joss also had piloting experience. And Dana was a former O.D.S.T. Interesting.

“Have you forwarded these to General Kimball?”

 _“I wanted Fox to look over them first,”_ Marz said simply. Then, as the front door swung open, said, _“speak of the devil.”_

Fox stopped in the doorway and glanced up at the speaker in the kitchen, then over at Locus. “What were you two talking about?” she asked, smiling questioningly.

Locus nodded in the direction of the projection. “We were discussing the candidates.”

 _“Really? We were discussing them? Because you didn’t say a whole lot these past few minutes,”_ Marz said flatly.

Locus glared up in the direction of her speaker.

“Oh, leave him alone, Marz,” Fox said, coming to stand beside him. She took a moment to read over the information for the five candidates, then said, “go on ahead and kick Tanner. I like Davis’ background a little better. The rest of them are fine though.”

_“Sounds good. Collins is still active, by the way. She fits the parameters, but she won’t be back in town for several months. I put her up there because she’s a near-perfect fit, but I can scrap her if you want.”_

“No, let’s keep her, and if we’re still here by then, I’ll see if I can get her onboard,” Fox replied. “Go on ahead and send the rest of those to Kimball.”

“Are we going to contact her?” Locus asked.

She looked up at him. “I will in a bit. You can go on ahead to bed if you want. I’ll be up for a little while longer.”

Locus narrowed his eyes at her slightly as she walked over to the coffee machine on the counter by the sink and put a pot on. The sun would be rising in another five hours. What could possibly be so important that she would want to stay up for it? Instead of prying, however, he asked, “do you really think that this is enough information to tell you whether or not these people will make good teammates?”

A small smile appeared on her face as she looked back at him. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”

 

* * *

 

Locus didn’t stay up for much longer after that, thankfully. He stuck around while Fox gave her report to Kimball, then had headed to bed once she had signed off. Fox waited a while, messing around on her compute until she was sure he was asleep before she pulled out her phone and checked the text message she had gotten from Marz earlier.

“What’s this about a video message for me?” she asked quietly.

_“One came through addressed to Pepper Matsukaze. Whoever it is, they’re probably trying to reach you for business.”_

“Technically, I’m still in space,” Fox replied.

_“I know. But we might be able to figure something out if we need to.”_

“That works,” Fox said. “Send the video to my laptop.”

_“Done, and done.”_

Fox watched as a video file icon appeared on her desktop. She put in her earbuds and clicked on it, watching as the face of a woman appeared on her screen. She had light olive skin and dark curly hair, making Fox wonder if she was of Mediterranean descent.

“Hello Miss Matsukaze. By the time this video reaches you, it will likely be very late in the evening, so I _do_ apologize if I woke you up.” The woman’s voice was sharp and commanding, but not impolite. “My name is Katrina Holtzman, and I represent Charon Industries.”

The sounds of the ice machine in the refrigerator and the traffic outside and the air conditioning and Katrina’s voice just _stopped._ And Fox felt her blood turn to icy slush in her veins as she stared at her screen, certain that her heart had stopped beating. And then the world came back to her, and she slammed her hand down on the spacebar and ripped out her earbuds and bolted for the bathroom, where she quickly learned that waffles don’t taste so good on the way back up.

She spat a few times into the bowl before flushing and dropping the lid back onto the seat, then she grabbed her toothbrush, loaded it with toothpaste, and jammed it in her mouth, scrubbing until the taste of bile and syrup was off her tongue. Then she rinsed out the sink, stuck her toothbrush back in it’s cup, and slid back against the wall into a sitting position, trying to steady her breathing.

She jumped when her phone buzzed, and fumbled with getting it out of her pocket, holding it in front of her with shaking hands. On the screen was a text message from Marz, asking, _[are you okay?]_

Fox tried to reply, but her hands were shaking too much to get the letters down right, so she gave up and called the number instead. “Marz?” she asked.

_“Hi. You ran off. What happened? Talk to me.”_

“She’s from Charon. The girl who sent the message is from Charon,” Fox said quickly, her voice shaking almost as much as her hands were.

 _“Okay…”_ Marz was silent for a moment, and Fox found herself listening to her own panicked breathing. _“There’s no way they know you’re here.”_

“But what if they do?”

_“They don’t. Pepper Matsukaze is still in space, helping Doctor Manning.”_

“I knew this would catch up to me,” Fox choked out, swiping at one of her eyes with her wrist when her vision began to blur with tears. “Oh _god_ , what do I tell Locus?”

 _“As much as I hate to say it, the truth. Under normal circumstances, this would be a Matsukaze Matter. But these_ **_aren’t_ ** _normal circumstances.”_

“Y-yeah,” Fox gulped, sniffling hard.

_“Grab a tissue, girlie. You need one.”_

Fox set the phone down on the floor and rose up on unsteady legs, then grabbed the tissue box off the counter and sat back down. She blew her nose a few times, crumpling up the tissues and tossing them into the wastebasket next to the toilet before she picked the phone back up. “Okay.”

_“Better?”_

“I guess.”

 _“Okay, now listen to me. Hargrove doesn’t know that you’re still alive. And because of your alias, he thinks that Pepper is still in space. If he wanted Fox, he wouldn’t have had one of his lackeys send you a nice video message. He would just have you either killed, or brought to him in chains. That is a fact,”_ Marz said. _“So this isn’t about Fox. You and your...friend...aren’t in any danger. Okay? If I had to guess, this is just business.”_

“My father’s dead,” Fox croaked, rubbing her eyes with her free hand.

_“I know. And the chairman knows that too. He was at the funeral, remember?”_

“I remember.” Fox fell silent for a moment, staring up at the lights over her bathroom mirror. “I’m the only person in my family left.”

_“And since he probably reads the news, he likely knows that you’re lined up to inherit the company that your dad and Carson started. Which means that you’re a good connection to maintain. Especially right now, when he needs the support.”_

Fox took a deep breath, counted to ten, then exhaled slowly. She repeated that several times until her breathing was steady, and her thoughts weren’t so jumbled. “He’s trying to maintain the bond between my family and his company. He thinks that because he was friends with my father, that I’d be willing to help him with the case,” Fox said flatly, coming to realize the gravity of what Marz was implying.

_“Probably.”_

“I…” Fox blinked a few times, then used the hem of her sleeve to wipe her eyes. “I’m going to need to talk to this...Holtzman chick. See what they want. I need to buy us more time. But...but if Locus or Kimball finds out that Hargrove is a family friend….they’ll never _trust_ me again.”

_“So leave that part out for now. Wait until they’re more comfortable with you, then drop it on them. It probably isn’t that important right now anyways. And besides, Hargrove knows that you’re set to inherit Emblem. You need your interactions with him from here on out to seem natural.”_

_Because if they smell blood, I’m finished,_ Fox thought, biting her lip. “Then I’ll just tell them that...I mean, it’s not exactly a lie for me to say that him and Carson are friends.”

_“Plus every billionaire knows each other anyways. It’s just a part of being in the one percent.”_

“Than that’s the plan,” Fox decided.

_“I’m with you. Whatever you choose to do.”_

“Okay,” Fox said. She rose to her feet and took a hard look at herself in the mirror. She looked like shit. “I have to do something about this hair. Pepper didn’t have red hair. They’ll know something’s up.”

 _“You still have all your old cosplay stuff from like...high school, under your bed,”_ Marz suggested.

Fox blinked. “Marz, you’re a fucking genius,” she said. Then she turned and stepped into her room. After a few moments of digging, she found a dark brown wig and a set of black contacts. It wasn’t perfect, but it was just a video chat, so it didn’t have to be. When she stepped out of her room again and headed back to the kitchen, she looked like she had just walked out of a meeting with a bunch of pathetic businessmen trying to convince her to agree to a partnership that she’d viciously turned down.

_“You didn’t have to put on a full pantsuit. Just the top would have worked.”_

Fox ran a hand unsteadily through the wig. “Look, if I’m going to do this, then I’m going the full nine yards.”

“ _Well...I’m proud of you for not wearing heels.”_

“I didn’t want to wake up Sleeping Beauty.”

_“Understandable. You should also invest in one of those holographic facial mesh things. That way you don’t have to jam contacts into your eyes and spend a half hour covering up that scar.”_

“Noted,” Fox said, letting out a long sigh. She then took a seat at the kitchen island, put her earbuds back in, and hit play. If she was going to do this, then she had to at least know what she was walking into.

“I’m reaching out to you because my employer, Mr. Malcolm Hargrove, wishes to discuss matters regarding The Cerberus Protocol,” Katrina continued.

 _Of course he does,_ Fox thought bitterly.

“Unfortunately, the chairman is currently tied up in another system, but I will be available to reach for the next four hours, so feel free to reach out to me as soon as you get this message. We can discuss the specifics then. My call address is the same one that I used to send this transmission to you. I look forward to speaking with you soon.” With that, the message ended.

Fox closed out of the window and rested her elbows on the edge of the kitchen counter, leaning forward and massaging her temples. “This is going to suuuuuuck.”

_“You can do this.”_

“I know,” Fox replied with a sigh, sitting up. “Kill the lights.” In a flash, everything around her was smothered in darkness, leaving only her face to be illuminated by her computer screen. She cracked her neck and rolled her shoulders, then took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then, when she was ready, she hit the video chat button next to Katrina’s call address.

The call connected, and seconds later, Katrina’s face appeared on the screen. “Miss Matsukaze! I figured I would have to wait until tomorrow to hear back from you!” she exclaimed cheerfully.

Fox forced a sweet smile onto her face. “Sorry about that. I had some work to get done,” she lied. “So, what about The Cerberus Protocol did the chairman have you reach out to me for?”

Katrina tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and glanced down, like she was looking at some notes nearby. “The chairman has some concerns about a group of terrorists who may be looking to use the Protocol to...take justice into their own hands,” she replied.

Fox frowned. “Terrorists? I haven’t heard anything about that.” She paused and adjusted herself in her seat to get more comfortable, then continued. “What exactly is your source for this information?”

“An attack on one of our research facilities that occurred several months ago,” Katrina replied. “There were no survivors, and the AI in the primary station that ran the rest of the facilities in the area was taken offline. As of right now, we are unable to try to bring it back up due to its location in hostile territory.”

Fox forced a look of faux concern onto her face, all the while feeling her stomach churn. That sounded an _awful_ lot like Nalome. There was no way it was a coincidence. “I’m very sorry to hear about that. But I still don’t see the connection. How does that have anything to do with The Cerberus Protocol?”

“We have reason to believe that this group of terrorists, or at least a handful of them, departed for the Sol System a few days ago,” Katrina explained.

Fox felt her heart sink. So they knew they were here. Great.

“If they were capable of taking down the AI that we built to overlook that research facility, there’s a very real possibility that they could be capable of doing the same thing to The Cerberus Protocol,” Katrina finished.

“With all due respect, The Cerberus Protocol is one of the most secure AI’s the U.N.S.C. has,” Fox said, mildly amused by this suggestion. “It’s highly unlikely that anyone trying to access it without proper authorization would even make it past the first level of security.”

“The chairman understands that, which is why he gave me these files to forward to you,” Katrina replied. Shortly after that, a file was sent through.

Fox open the file when it appeared on her desktop, and felt something cold and bitter and angry knot up inside of her when the first piece of data was about CORA. She glanced over all of it, quickly absorbing the information, before she looked back up at Katrina. “Interesting,” she said slowly. While it was true that CORA had been an extremely advanced AI who had nearly achieved metastability by the time she had been shut down, she was nowhere _near_ the level that The Cerberus Protocol was at. Of course, that information was all classified, so of _course_ Hargrove wouldn’t know that. And of _course_ he would compare CORA to The Cerberus Protocol. He had always been arrogant, which thankfully made it easier for Fox to leave him in the dark this time around. “I’ll forward this to my boss and have him up the security measures.”

“Perfect,” Katrina said with a grin. “But that’s not all I have for you. After looking at what happened to our AI, we created a program to protect against the sort of attack that destroyed it. The chairman wanted me to offer it to you, as a gesture of thanks for standing by him during these difficult times.”

Fox had to resist the urge to smile. Clearly subtlety was no longer a part of Hargrove’s character. “Unfortunately, that sort of thing would have to pass a scan. And Carson has grown more paranoid with age, and I doubt the U.N.S.C. would approve of this program either.”

“We understand that,” Katrina said with a plastic smile. “However, _you_ have access to the system.”

“Ah…” Fox said softly. “I’m afraid I haven’t had time to return to Earth to update my annual retinal scan for some time. I’m unfortunately locked out of the system until I do so. And even then, it would go _strongly_ against protocol to install a program like that.”

“I see…” Katrina said, deflating a little.

And Fox decided to play her hand, because Hargrove had shown her his. It was only fair that she gave him an interesting game. “I can, however, get on a ship back to Earth tomorrow to help assist with updating the system’s security.”

“Oh! You don’t have to do that!” Katrina exclaimed, wide-eyed.

Fox waved a hand dismissively and chuckled. “The chairman is an old family friend. If he’s concerned about the wellbeing of The Cerberus Protocol, then I’m willing to put my work down for a few months to come back and get everything sorted out. Besides, I need to update my retinal scan. Might as well get both done at the same time.”

Katrina gave her a grateful look. “Thank you so much! I’ll let the chairman know!”

“Speaking of the chairman, is there an estimation yet for when he plans on arriving on Earth?” Fox asked.

Katrina turned her eyes upward in thought for a moment before looking back into the camera. “His ship is currently undergoing repairs, but he should be on Earth in a month, at most.”

“Hm,” Fox said with a nod. “We’ll have to get dinner sometime.”

Katrina gave her a warm smile. “I’ll forward that to him.” Then she straightened up and said, “well, thank you so much for reaching out to me. And for dropping everything to come to Earth.”

“No, no!” Fox chuckled. “I should be thanking _you!_ Like I said,  there’s been nothing on our radar about a terrorist attack. It’ll be good to get this information to Carson so we can handle it as quickly as possible.”

Katrina simply nodded, then said, “well, when you get to Earth, I’d love to keep in touch.”

Fox almost, _almost_ laughed. Either this girl was flirting with her, or she was trying to keep tabs on her. Either way, it was adorable. “Maybe we could grab coffee sometime,” she suggested, then, “I’d better go. I need to make sure I’m on that ship in a few hours. Thank you again!”

“Bye!” Katrina said, giving a cheerful wave. Then the screen cut to black.

Fox stared at it for a moment, then buried her face in her hands with a groan. When she finally looked up, the lights were back on.

_“You did great.”_

“I went to business school for several years, and have been dealing with corporate schmucks ever since. I would fucking hope so,” Fox said flatly, hopping off of the bar stool. “I’m going to shower,” she announced, heading back to her room, pulling the bobby pins securing her wig in place out as she did so.

The shower felt amazing, but it wasn’t nearly enough to improve Fox’s mental state. And when she finally wandered back out into the kitchen with her pajamas on, it showed on her face. She plopped herself heavily back onto the barstool and stared at her computer screen. The thought that she would have to open up about the truth behind her connection to Hargrove made her feel sick, especially when she thought about how Locus and Kimball would react to it all, but she knew the longer she held her tongue, the worse their reaction would be. And it wasn’t like she hadn’t already hinted at it.

 _Tomorrow I’ll tell them,_ she thought with a sigh. The last thing she wanted was for Chorus to wind up getting involved in the politics that surrounded the world she and Hargrove came from. But if Locus and Kimball knew about her connection to Hargrove, it would make it easier for her to pretend to be on his side, while taking him apart from the shadows. She already had enough on her plate as it was, and she’d already lied to them once. So she’d be honest, take whatever heat came her way for it, and move forward. At this point, it was the best she could do.   

 

* * *

 

“Well that was fast,” Wash remarked, looking at the profiles that Kimball had pulled up above the holo-table in her office. He, Carolina, and Grey had been called up to meet her several minutes ago. Wash had figured it had something to with Fox, but he hadn’t expected to learn that she had already found candidates for a team. “She got this to you without having a retinal scan?”

Kimball, who was standing on the other side of the table, simply nodded, eyes on the profiles.

“Did she give you any information about how she planned to recruit them?” Carolina asked.

Wash looked over at her, then back at Kimball, who leaned back slightly and said “not yet, but I’m sure she’ll give us more information tomorrow.” She picked up her coffee mug from the edge of the table and took a sip. “Right now, I’d like to focus on those passwords she sent our way,” she said, looking over at Grey.

“If you’re asking me to try to get us access to Charon’s database, you could just say so,” Grey said with an amused smile.

“If it’s not too much trouble.”

“It shouldn’t be,” Grey replied. “I don’t have anything else on my plate at the moment aside from my usual tinkering.”

Wash exchanged a glance with Carolina, wondering if she was thinking of the same thing. After they had rescued the Reds and Blues, The Meta’s armor had been handed off to Grey for examination. “That reminds me, do you have any updates on the armor?” he asked, looking over at Grey.

“None so far, but I _have_ been working on it here and there,” Grey replied, putting a hand on her hip. “I’ll let you know right away if I find something, though.”

Wash nodded in thanks, then looked back over at Kimball, who was watching the two of them with a mildly annoyed expression. Realizing it hadn’t been the time or place for such a question, Wash muttered out a quick “sorry,” and nodded at her to continue.

Kimball’s expression softened, and she looked back to Grey and asked, “I’m sure you’ll be keeping contact with Fox while you look through the database, but feel free to recruit the help of anyone else you need, if you need it.”

“Why thank you,” Grey replied.

Kimball nodded, then continued. “If you find anything you think might be useful, send it my way, and I’ll make sure Fox sees it. Until she has full access to that AI, she’s going to be relying on us to figure out what to do.”

“I’m guessing she didn’t tell you how soon she’d be able to get that retinal scan?” Carolina asked.

“She said she was going to call her boss at Emblem to schedule a time to come in at some point during the next week or so, but she didn’t give me a date. I’m sure I’ll have more details tomorrow,” Kimball replied. She was quiet for a moment, then said “I believe that’s all I have for you right now. Grey, I’ll forward those codes to you for you to get started with them.”

“Perfect,” Grey replied.

“Other than that, you’re all dismissed,” Kimball finished.

Wash turned as Grey as she chimed out a bubbly farewell and walked through the office doors into the hall, then looked over when Carolina walked past him, meeting his gaze questioningly when she saw he wasn’t moving. “I’ll catch up to you,” he said.

She nodded, then followed Grey out.

“What did you need, Wash?” Kimball asked.

Wash turned back to her, watching her take a sip of her coffee as he thought about what he wanted to say. “How...do you think things are going, down there?”

“On...Earth, you mean?” Kimball asked, setting her mug back down on the table and raising her eyebrows at him.

“Yes.”

Kimball shifted her weight and sighed. “It’s only been two days, Wash. It’ll be hard to tell until the two of them get established.”

“Well...I know that, but… have they seemed alright so far? How is Fox doing? It’s been _years_ since she’s gone home, and after everything she’s been through...I don’t know,” Wash finished with a shrug, not really sure how to word where he was going with the question.

Kimball blinked. “You’re concerned about her?”

“She’s our teammate. Of course I am.”

The corner of Kimball’s mouth twitched slightly upwards, and she said “she seems to be fine, from what I’ve seen. I haven’t noticed any changes in her behavior.”

“And what about Locus? How’s he doing?”

Kimball stared at him, then tilted her head slightly and peered at him with a slight frown. “You’re...you want to know how he’s _doing?”_ she asked incredulously.

Wash shrugged, glancing away from her. “I mean...it seems pretty obvious to me that he didn’t…. _get_ the way he is now without something...bad...happening. We know that him and Felix were the only survivors of a really bad fight during the war. And that _neither_ of them settled down into civilian life afterwards.” Wash crossed his arms, then added “I’m not a psychologist, but I _have_ been through...a lot. I guess...I guess what I’m trying to say is that I wouldn’t be surprised if being on Earth is hard for him.”

Kimball held his gaze for a moment, eyes narrowed, body frozen with uncertainty and tension, her mouth a hard line. “Wash,” she began, her voice low, “do you think that he’s going to be a danger to Fox?”

“No,” Wash replied quickly, shaking his head. “She made it clear that she could handle herself around him. And he’s seemed pretty comfortable around her.”

“Then what?”

Wash sucked in a breath. “All I’m saying is that there’s a chance that some drastic changes to his personality might happen based on the fact that he’s stuck in a situation that’s very different from the sort he’s been used to. And- and if it ever becomes a concern to you or Fox, and you think I could help by trying to talk to him, that…” he squeezed one of his hands into a fist, then uncrossed his arms and looked back at Kimball “...that that’s fine. I’d be fine with that. If you think I can help, then I want to help.”

Kimball stared at him, disbelief drawing lines on her forehead. “I...see…” she said slowly, then straightened up slightly, moving in a way that reminded Wash of a carnival animatronic. She tapped her fingers on the edge of the table for a moment, lost in thought, then looked over at him and said “I appreciate that. I...may take you up on that if it becomes necessary.”

Wash set his mouth into a hard almost-smile, and nodded in acknowledgement.

Both of them were silent for a while before Kimball spoke up again. “Is that all?”

“Uh, yes. Sorry,” Wash said, realizing that he was just standing there, wasting her time. He jerked a thumb back over his shoulder and said, “I can...I’ll go.”

“That’s fine,” Kimball said, seeming to get her composure back.

“I’m going to go find Tucker and Caboose, if you need to find me for anything,” Wash replied, turning and heading towards the door, stopping in front of it and looking back when he heard Kimball call out to him.

“Thank you,” Kimball said. “I can’t imagine that it was easy to offer your help, but...I _do_ appreciate it.”

“Anything to help get this war over with,” Wash replied, nodding and giving her a half-smile before stepping out into the hall.

 

* * *

 

“Is it those leaves?”

“Yeah, it is.”

“Dude, that was way too easy. Give me a hard one this time.”

“Okay….I spy with my little eye, something... _blue.”_

“Is it you?”

“No.”

“Is it _me?”_

“No.”

“Is it the sky?”

“No.”

“The river?”

“No.”

“Jesus, Caboose, are you going to say no to everything?” Tucker asked, rounding on his teammate irately.

Caboose was quiet for a moment, hugging Freckles just a little closer to his body, then quietly replied, “no.”

Tucker let out a frustrated groan, then went back to looking at his surroundings. They were stationed on watch outside of headquarters with nothing to do but try to kill time. It was right about now that Tucker was starting to wish that he shared the same ability to fall asleep virtually anywhere that Grif had. Frowning under his helmet, he stepped forward and peered down at the valley below towards the mouth of the cave that headquarters was located in. “Is it Andersmith?”

“No.”

“Ugh. Caboose, you know the point of this game is for the other player to be able to _guess_ what you’re looking at, _right?”_ Tucker asked, frowning in the direction of the lieutenants who were stationed by the mouth of the cave.

“I know.”

“So then what _is_ it?!” Tucker demanded, still searching the valley and not looking back at Caboose.

“It’s Agent Washingtub!”

Tucker straightened up a little, confused, then started to say “Caboose, Wash isn’t even _out--”_ as he turned back to his teammate, then cutting off with a soft _“oh”_ when he saw Wash  walking towards them.

“Hi Agent Washingtub!” Caboose exclaimed, raising himself up on is toes and waving at Wash. “Do you wanna play Eye-Spy with us?! Tucker isn’t very good at it.”

 _“No!_ _You_ just suck at picking things to find!” Tucker shot at him.

“Uh, no, Caboose. Thanks though,” Wash replied as he joined them by the edge of the cliff. “How are you guys doing?”

“What happened this time?” Tucker asked, ignoring his question.

Wash jerked his head back slightly in surprise. “What do you mean?”

“Uh, you came up here to find us when you have plenty of other _more_ important things to do, and you asked us how we’re _doing?”_ Tucker replied.

“Am I not allowed to have a conversation with my own team?” Wash asked.

“Dude, everything you just said is secret Freelancer code for ‘shit just happened,” Tucker replied.

“That’s not true,” Wash said slowly. “I’ve _never_ asked you how you’re doing before telling you that something bad happened.”

“Yeah, well, you never go out of your way to hang out with us either, so…” Tucker replied in an attempt to save face.

Wash let out a long sigh, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose, but wound up hitting his visor, and had to settle for burying his face in one hand. “Look, just...let’s start over, okay?”

“Okay,” Caboose replied. “Do you want me to wave again?”

“No, Caboose, that’s...that’s fine. Look, just--We just finished talking to General Kimball, and I wanted to give you guys an update,” Wash huffed, looking back at the two of them.

“We?” Tucker asked.

“Carolina, Grey, and I,” Wash said, then waved a hand and continued. “Look--i-it doesn’t matter, alright? The point is, I...I stayed after to talk with Kimball.”

“Okay…” Tucker asked crossing his arms and leaning towards Wash slightly, suspicion seeping into him. “And?”

“And her and I went over some stuff that I figured you’d want to know about,” Wash said.

“Are we in trouble?” Caboose asked in a hushed voice.

“No, Caboose, you’re not in trouble. _No one’s_ in trouble,” Wash replied.

“Okay, so then what happened?” Tucker asked, impatient.

Wash looked away, out over the valley. “We...talked about how we thought Fox and Locus were doing, and I brought up some concerns I had about how Locus will adapt to living on Earth for the time being. And I...told Kimball that if it seemed like he was having a hard time adjusting, and she thought it would help, that I would talk to him.”

Tucker stared. “What. The fuck. _Wash?!_ Are you--?!” He cut off and bit his lip hard under his helmet, then looked back at Wash and said “so what, the guy tries to kill you and fucks with you for months, and now you’re offering to be his fucking _therapist?!”_

“Tucker, that’s _not_ what I said,” Wash replied evenly.

“Yeah, Tucker, he’s just trying to help Mr Locust feel better. Because he’s all sad because he was the bad guy, and he was wrong about it, and now he’s trying to help. But he doesn’t really know how to so he gets even _more_ sad,” Caboose said.

“Yeah, I don’t give a _fuck_ about how Locus feels, honestly,” Tucker snapped, then looked back at Wash and added, “and neither should _you.”_

“Tucker, I know you don’t trust him, but he’s on our side now,” Wash replied, voice tight, like his patience was wearing thin.

“So what? That _doesn’t_ mean we have to care about him! Just because I agreed that we could trust him to fuck up Charon, doesn’t mean that we should get all buddy-buddy with him because of it,” Tucker replied.

“I know,” Wash said. “But if he’s going to do his job, we need him to be able to adapt to his new surroundings. And Fox is all by herself down there with him. She’s about the only person there who really knows about everything that happened. And it’s not fair to expect her to take on the responsibility of dealing with him as he tries to get settled while she’s trying to tackle her own issues. Don’t forget what she went through on Nalome.”

“I’m not stupid, Wash. I didn’t forget,” Tucker huffed.

“I know you’re not,” Wash replied.

Tucker was silent for a moment, still frustrated at all of it. The last thing Wash needed to put up with was helping Locus in any way, _especially_ after all the hell the latter put him through. It wasn’t fair. “He hurt you before,” he mumbled out, crossing his arms and looking away from Wash.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Wash tilt his head at him. “I...I know, Tucker. I know. But he can’t anymore.”

“And if he does, Miss Fox’ll just beat him up!” Caboose chimed in.

“Yeah,” Tucker said bitterly. “Fine.” He turned and looked back at Wash. “But you put yourself first, okay? That fucker got himself into this mess on his own. So if you don’t have to help, _don’t._ And if you need to, then make sure it’s a last-resort, okay?”

“Tucker…”

 _“Okay,_ Wash?”

Wash let out a long sigh. “Okay, Tucker. I will.”

“Good,” Tucker replied, giving him an approving nod and looking away. He was silent for a moment, then said, “now help me find the stupid thing Caboose said he spied earlier. It was blue.”

“Blue?” Wash asked, glancing over at Caboose.

“Yeah, he didn’t find it yet,” Caboose confirmed with a nod.

“Huh,” Wash said, and looked around at their surroundings for a moment before asking “What did you already guess, Tucker?”

“Me, Caboose, the sky, the river, and Andersmith,” Tucker replied.

“And it was none of those?”

“No,” Caboose replied.

Wash looked around in silence for another moment, then nodded at a bush to his right with some small berries on it that were a deep purple. “Is it those?”

“No, it’s _blue,”_ Caboose replied.

“They look blue-ish,” Wash argued.

“I’m pretty sure he’s just been fucking with me,” Tucker said.

Wash was silent, looking like he was deep in thought, then reached up and pulled off his helmet, handing it off to Tucker.

“Dude, what are you doing?” Tucker asked, taking it.

“Troubleshooting,” Wash replied, then said “Caboose, let me see your helmet.”

“Whyyyyy?”

“I just want to check something is all.”

Caboose held his gaze for a moment, then said, “okayyyy,” and reached up and pulled off his helmet, handing it to Wash, who, much to Tucker’s surprise, immediately put it on.

“Caboose,” Wash said slowly after a moment, “is _everything_ blue?”

“Not anymore,” Caboose replied.

“You have your infrared turned on, Caboose,” Wash replied, taking off the helmet and handing it back to him.

“Yeah, I know,” Caboose said. “Tucker told me to give him a hard one.”

“You son of a bitch,” Tucker whispered in disbelief, looking over at Wash, surprised when he saw a small smile on the other man’s face.

“You got what you asked for,” Wash shrugged at him, then held out his hands to take his helmet back.

Tucker gave it to him, grumbling, “yeah, but I didn’t think he was gonna _cheat.”_

“Aw, don’t be such a poor sport, Tucker!” Caboose said, putting his helmet back on.

Tucker opened his mouth to give a sharp reply, then changed his mind and said, “next time, _I’m_ the one who does the spying, got it?”

“Okayyyy,” Caboose said.

 

* * *

 

“I can’t believe it’s been two days,” Simmons sighed, looking up at the canopy overhead.

“I can’t believe you’re _counting,”_ Grif replied.

“I can’t believe people are still makin’ a fuss over it!” Sarge added.

Simmons looked over at them, squinting a little as his visor took a second to adjust to the sunlight filtering through the trees. “I just can’t believe we actually sent them to Earth, is all.”

“You _did_ agree to it,” Grif reminded him.

“W-well yeah, but--” Simmons cut off and stared at the ground, frowning under his helmet at the leaf litter below him.

“Y’know, I don’t recall General Kimball telling us when they were gonna come back,” McAllister said, speaking up from the rear of their patrol group.

“Volleyball, why’d you have to say that?” Simmons whined.

“Because my name’s McAllister,” she replied flatly.

“So did you bet anything?” Grif asked, looking over his shoulder at her.

“What, you mean like for that dumb thing Palomo started?” McAllister asked.

“Yup.”

“Are you going to rat me out?”

“Do you really think I care that much?”

“Fair point,” McAllister said. “I put in twenty, by the way. Bet Locus would snap in four weeks.”

“Solid,” Grif replied with a nod.

“I can’t believe this is a thing,” Simmons huffed.

“Oh relax, Simmons! It’s not like it’s hurtin’ anyone,” Sarge said. “Besides, we used to do things like this all the time back in Blood Gulch!”

“Seriously?” McAllister asked.

“Yep, and it was always over something stupid, and Tex always tried to win,” Grif said.

“Who’s Tex?”

Simmons looked back at McAllister, whose head was tilted slightly. “She...was a member of Blue Team.”

“And then she tried to kill us!” Sarge added. “Multiple times, too!”

“Wait a minute, is _this_ the chick who punched Captain Grif in the dick like eight times?” McAllister asked.

“Oh _come_ on,” Grif muttered.

Simmons bit his lip to try to hide a grin, even though he knew no one could see it. “Yeah. And in that same fight, Tucker got covered in a bunch of black stuff, and we thought he was Tex, so we beat him up.”

“You guys beat up _Captain Tucker?!”_ McAllister exclaimed, sounding delighted.

“Now let’s get one thing straight,” Sarge said, stopping and turning around to face her. _“I_ knew that it was Tucker, but these two numbskulls had no idea.”

“So why’d you help me punch him, jackass?!” Grif exclaimed.

“Because he’s a dirty Blue,” Sarge replied simply, then turned on his heel and continued down the trail.

Simmons caught Grif’s gaze, and the latter shook his head. “I can’t believe this shit.”

 _“I_ can’t believe we’re just finding out about it,” Simmons replied.

“I can’t believe you guys don’t talk about your fights more often,” McAllister added.

“Not all of ‘em are worth talkin’ about,” Sarge replied without looking back at her.

“No kidding,” Grif muttered.

“Why not? I’m sure some of the fights you guys have been in were _awesome,”_ McAllister said.

Under his helmet, Simmons frowned. “Actually, most of them kinda sucked,” he said, looking over at his lieutenant.

“Save for the ones where we kicked the Blues’ asses,” Sarge said.

“I mean, a lot of the fights that we had during the war sucked too,” McAllister said, “but we still _talk_ about them. They just make good stories.”

“Hm,” Grif said.

The four of them walked in silence for a bit before Simmons spoke up. “S-so what are you guys doing after this?”

“I’m probably gonna go find the other lieutenants and see what they’re up to,” McAllister said.

“Gonna go practice my shooting. Gotta be ready for if those dirty pirates come back,” Sarge said.

“I’m gonna take a nap,” Grif replied.

“Cool,” Simmons said.

“What’re you up to?” Sarge asked.

“Oh, m-me? I, um. Well, Doctor Grey asked for my help with some data that Fox sent us. Something about passwords to get into Charon’s network,” Simmons replied.

“Well that was fast,” McAllister remarked. “They’ve only been down there for two days and they’ve already got stuff for us.”

“So you and Grey’re gonna hack their network and get some intel?” Sarge asked.

“Pretty much. Since there’s not a lot we can do to help Fox and Locus other than that,” Simmons replied.

“Interesting,” Sarge said, scratching the chin of his helmet.

The four of them made their way down the trail leading to the valley, wrapping up their patrol and bidding each other farewell as they went their separate ways. After dropping his gun off at the armory, Simmons headed down to Grey’s lab, knocking on the door and waiting until he heard a melodious “come i-in!” before stepping through.

“Well _hello_ Captain Simmons, how nice of you to join me,” Grey said without looking away from the quantum computer’s display.

Simmons walked over and joined her, eyes on the screen. “S-sorry, patrol took a little longer than I thought it would.”

“That’s alright. I got a good head-start,” Grey replied, glancing over at him.

“So did you get into the network yet?” Simmons asked.

“I _did,”_ Grey said, a small smile appearing on her face. “It didn’t take a whole lot of effort, really. I just had to triangulate the signal from _The Staff of Charon_ to their headquarters on Io, which was luckily manageable. _Unfortunately,_ the fact that I was able to pull that off means that the ship’s systems are back online. Which means that Fox and Locus are going to have to prepare themselves for some company pretty soon.”

Simmons blinked, horrified. “D-does Kimball know about this?!”

“Of course she does,” Grey replied with a dismissive wave. “I called her about five minutes ago, actually. She’s going to let those two know when they call her tomorrow.”

“Oh. O-okay,” Simmons said, relaxing a little. He watched the screen for a moment, not really looking at anything in particular on it, then asked, “how do you feel about all of this?”

“You’re going to need to be more specific, sweetie,” Grey said.

“I mean...a-about Fox and Locus,” Simmons elaborated.

Grey leaned back from the keyboard slightly and tapped a finger against her lips in thought. “I think they’ll be fine, truthfully.”

Simmons frowned and scuffed a heel against the ground, crossing his arms. “Okay.”

“You disagree with me?”

Simmons looked over at Grey, who had her eyebrows raised at him. “I- I mean-- I don’t know…”

The corner of Grey’s mouth twitched upwards and she reached out and put a hand on his arm. “You know, there’s no sense in getting wound up over something you can’t control.”

“I know,” Simmons said unhappily. “It’s just-- did you know that the lieutenants started a _betting pool_ for how long everyone thinks it’s gonna take for Locus to snap and do something bad?”

“I am very much aware of that, yes,” Grey said, taking her hand back. “In fact, I put money in _myself,”_ she added with a sly grin.

“You _what?!”_ Simmons exclaimed, recoiling slightly. “Wh- _why?!_ What did you bet?!”

“A hundred bucks,” Grey said, still smiling, “and I bet that he wasn’t going to mess up _once.”_

Simmons stared at her, slowly allowing himself to unwind. “Wait, really?”

“Really,” Grey replied with a nod. She turned back to the screen and her smile faded slightly. “Go ahead and ask me why.”

“O-okay...why?” Simmons asked cautiously.

“Because he _wants_ to do better,” Grey replied. “Locus is a lot of things, but he’s certainly not undisciplined. If he wants to change, and he _does;_ we’ve seen plenty of proof of that, then he’ll find a way to make that change happen. And he’s got Fox with him. We all saw how fast he started cooperating and being less...well, _awful,_ once she started working with him.”

Simmons stared at the floor, rubbing the back of his neck. “Do you really believe that?” he asked, raising his eyes to meet hers.

“Absolutely,” Grey replied.

And Simmons forced a small smile onto his face and looked away again, feeling some of the unease that had been settled in his chest since the day Fox and Locus left subside. Grey was the smartest person he’d ever met. If she really thought that things were going to be okay, then he trusted her. “S-so what can I help you with?” he asked, nodding at the screen, which displayed a loading bar on it that was filled to 99%.

“Well,” Grey said with a sigh, looking back at the screen. “I’ve got a data chip that I’m putting all of this on. Once it’s all loaded, I’ll give that to you, and you can find a computer to put it on. After that, we’re going to comb through the files and see if we can find anything useful. I’ll start at the top of the list, you can start at the bottom, and we’ll meet in the middle.”

Simmons nodded, watching as the loading bar disappeared and Grey ejected the data chip and handed it off to him. “Is there like a laptop somewhere?”

“Mine’s over on the workbench,” Grey said, jerking a thumb over her shoulder. “Password’s ‘lavender24.”

“Okay,” Simmons walked over and retrieved the laptop, bringing it back over to the quantum computer and sitting down on the ground with his back to the large machine. He typed in the password and inserted the data chip. “So what sort of thing are we looking for?”

“Anything that points to connections that Hargrove might have, or information that can be used as leverage in some way,” Grey replied, stepping away from the computer and retrieving a rolling char from a workbench on the far end of the room, pushing it over to the keyboard stand and sitting down in it. “There,” she sighed contentedly, “much better.”

Simmons looked back over at the laptop, biting his lip. This sort of thing was pretty new to him, and even with the parameters that Grey had given him, he still felt unprepared. _Might as well just get started,_ he thought, opening the first file.

Simmons wasn’t sure how long he sat there, combing through file after file detailing all kinds of horrible things. Alien enslavement, experimentation, weapon tests, dirty deals, the list of things on the files that had been pulled from the network just went on and on and on.

Closing a file containing video documentation of a weapons test on a group of captured alien prisoners of war, Simmons slouched back against the quantum computer and ran a hand down the side of his face, his eye sore from staring at a screen for so long.

“Getting tired?” Grey asked, looking over at him. She appeared just as worn as Simmons felt.

“I can keep going,” he lied.

“Mmm,” Grey said, a dubious look on her face. She turned back to her screen and sighed. “I’m going to look at one more. After that, why don’t we break for the evening and come back tomorrow?”

“Okay,” Simmons replied, grateful. “I can run through another one too.”

“Sounds good,” Grey said.

Simmons looked back towards the laptop and pulled up another file. This one was a document of some sort, and as he scanned over it, he felt his heart sink. It was a report from some sort of dropship in Chorus’ star system detailing information about another small ship in slipspace nearby, dated two days ago. “H-hey Doctor Grey?”

“What is it?” she asked, her voice tense.

“I _think_ we have a problem.”

Grey looked over at him, frowning, then gestured for him to come to her and said “show me.”

Simmons stood and carried the laptop over to her, turning it so she could see the screen. “I think Hargrove knows that Fox and Locus are on Earth.”

Grey’s expression grew harder. “It seems so.” She glanced at him, then nodded back at her screen. “That’s not the only bad news we might have. Look.”

And Simmons did, peering over her shoulder at the large screen, eyes running over lines of data. “Wait, that’s not--”

“They’ve been scanning all of the outposts on Nalome for information,” Grey said.

Simmons felt a ball of ice settle in his chest. “D-do you think they got a hold of the kill code? What if they try to use it on that AI that Fox has?!”

Grey shook her head. “I don’t know. But this is definitely something we need to let both her and Kimball know about. I don’t know what that bastard, Hargrove is up to, but both your file and mine are recent additions to the network, which means he has some sort of plan.”

Simmons swallowed hard. “Do you think he’ll try to get CORA back online so he can use her weapons system?”

“I’m not sure,” Grey replied, running a hand through her hair. “But whatever he plans on doing, I doubt any of us are going to like it.” She straightened up and picked up the datapad that was laying on the touch screen portion of the keyboard, and Simmons watched as she sent some sort of message on it.

“Was that Kimball?” he asked.

Grey nodded, looking back at the screen, blue light illuminating her face. “I don’t like the looks of any of this, but if Hargrove is going to make a move, we need Fox and Locus to know about it. They might be our only chance of stopping whatever he has coming. And if Charon plans to wipe them out, it could mean serious trouble for all of us.”

Simmons frowned, looking at the laptop in his arms, then back over at the screen in front of Grey. “I’m going to keep working,” he declared, walking over and sitting back down in his original spot.

“You should get some rest,” Grey said.

Simmons shook his head. “I’ll be fine. Probably.”

“You’re going to kill a bunch of brain cells if you pull an all-nighter.”

Simmons closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath, then looked over at Grey. “L-look, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, getting me to sleep and all. But Fox is our _friend,_ and I’m _worried_ about her. If Hargrove is going to try to hurt her, and I can find a way to let her know ahead of time, I’m _going to.”_

And Grey let out a small sigh, a half-smile appearing on her face. She swiveled her chair around and stood, taking a moment to stretch, before declaring “very well, stay put. I’m going to go get us some coffee.”

Simmons watched her walk past, relieved that she hadn’t tried any harder to get him to leave, then turned back to the laptop and got back to work. He wasn’t on ground zero with Fox, but that didn’t make her any less his teammate, and he wasn’t about to sit by and let something bad happen to her if he could give her a warning of some sort. She was down there risking her life for a group of people that had, over the years, become like family to him. He figured this was the least he could do.

 

* * *

 

“Chairman! What a pleasant surprise!”

Hargrove greeted the man who had spoken with a nod, replying with a pleasant, “good evening Doctor Marlowe. I trust that you are well?”

“Now that I’m certain that all of our technology down here won’t cause any accidental casualties due to overheating or other malfunctions, yes,” Marlowe replied, gesturing around the lab before reaching up and adjusting his round glasses with a gloved hand. “I take it you’re here about our good friend?”

“I would like an update on his current condition, if it’s not too much trouble,” Hargrove replied.

Marlowe grinned. “Well, you didn’t have to come all the way down into my dungeon for that, sir. I could have just send you a report.”

“I’d prefer to _see_ how things are coming along, if it’s all the same to you,” Hargrove said, allowing a hint of an edge to his voice this time.

Marlowe took the hint. “Understood,” he said dipping his head apologetically. “Right this way!” He turned and led Hargrove deeper into the lab, explaining their recent progress in their current scientific endeavor as he went. “I think you’ll be pleased, sir, to know that the data collected on Nalome wasn’t entirely useless to us. We were able to pull some information regarding that alien energy core the research team found that has proved quite helpful in our development of our current models. Of course, the technology is still in its prototype stages, and we have quite a ways to go before it’s finished, but with our current schedule, and rate at which we’re successfully implementing improvements to our models, we _should_ have a successful and fully effective piece to attach to our friend around the same time his recovery period is complete. With any luck, nothing will change to throw off that synchronization, but we’re planning ahead just in case.”

“What do you have so far?” Hargrove asked, eyeing a table of materials and parts occupied by a duo of scientists working to assemble them as he and Marlowe walked past.

“So far, we have a basic model that implements hard light technology in a similar fashion to the way that core did it. We’re still working with it to see what sort of weapon we can attach with it. We’d be past this period by now if the core had been recoverable, but, oh well, we’re making good progress regardless,” Marlowe replied, waving a hand vaguely. “Right now, we’re looking at some type of sword. Depending on our friend’s skill level, that might suffice, but I’d need to ask _him.”_

“Is that all?”

“No, no! I haven’t even gotten to the best part!” Marlowe replied with a laugh. “We’ve been working on the models for the lower half, and they’ve proven to be extremely flexible, and would allow our friend a much larger range of movement than that prior to his unfortunate...accident. We’re also working on adjusting them so he would be capable of far greater speed than he was originally.”

“And the patient?” Hargrove asked, taking a sip from the mug of coffee he had brought with him.

Marlowe stopped and turned, sticking a finger in the air. “Ah,” he said with a slight frown. “He hasn’t been...very agreeable as of late. Currently, he’s under, so I’m afraid he won’t be able to answer any questions you may have. But I can take you to him, regardless, and show you his current status.”

“Very well,” Hargrove said. “That will do.”

Marlowe nodded and turned the corner around a large machine, stopping in front of a large glass tube that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. The inside of it was filled with a thick orange substance that bubbled and glowed, casting ring of golden light in the space around it. Hargrove joined Marlowe at his side, peering into the tube, making out the very faint silhouette of a human.

 

 

 

“If you don’t mind me speaking freely,” Marlowe began, “I’d say he’s holding up quite well, considering we cut off a number of his limbs without any _real_ medical cause.”

“Progress comes at a price, Doctor,” Hargrove said, eyes never leaving the tube. “Besides, we could have simply let him _die_ after his failure on Chorus. If anything, this is a _mercy.”_

“Mm,” Marlowe said, nodding. Out of the corner of his eye, Hargrove saw the doctor turn towards him. “I have his readings on a datapad if you would like to have a look at them.”

“Read them off to me,” Hargrove replied, narrowing his eyes slightly.

“Very well,” Marlowe said, and did so.

But Hargrove was only half-listening. There was too much going on for him to care about _readings_. As long as the patient was stable, then he had one less thing to worry about. All that mattered was that when the time came, their test run of the technology Marlowe would be implementing would go smoothly. This breakthrough could be just the sort of thing that could win the U.N.S.C. over. Soldiers that could break down and then have a few parts replaced and get right back in the fight. Soldiers that were capable of human intelligence and innovation, with the killing efficiency of a machine.

They were nearly there; one step closer to another war where they could _prove_ how useful their technology really was. How he could _prove_ that the U.N.S.C. needed him to help combat the Insurrectionist threat. All he needed to do was hire another lot of expendable space pirates and have them kick up a death toll high enough to be noticed, and then swoop in with his little army and save the day.

And Chorus was the perfect chance to redeem himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> >EDIT: I'm gay and I can't do math.
> 
> PURPLE SPACE DAD IS BACK BITCHES!!!!! YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH  
> You have no idea how excited I am for these three to work together holy fuck.  
> Locus: *inhales*  
> Siris: you’re fucking grounded, Sam.  
> Locus: B’(
> 
> >B} the plot thickens.  
> Fox u little shiet.  
> Simmons is a tough cookie and I love him and I love him and Grey working together.  
> Caboose is the light of my life.  
> Wash, for the love of fuck, worry about yourself for once you dumb highway-looking shit.
> 
> *Cough cough* remember how Fox mentioned last chapter that she was worried about her shield falling into the wrong hands? Remember how that shield is made from an alien energy core? Read that last scene again >:)  
> Also go back and rewatch the first episode of the merc trilogy in S14. I think you might notice a similarity or two :3c


	20. The Cleanup Crew

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'M BACK, BABY!

“I looked over those candidates you sent me yesterday,” Kimball said, taking a sip of her coffee, eyes on the holo-projection of Fox in front of her.

“What do you think?”

“On paper, they look good, but once you have them all together, I want to connect with all of you,” Kimball replied. You could never really know a person based off of some record in a computer. You had to meet them.

“Sounds like a plan. Marz is getting ready to drop a line for all of them, save for the pilot. We don’t really need him yet, and right now when the number of allies we have is still pretty low, it’s better to keep our operations quiet,” Fox said.

Kimball nodded. “I take it you plan on reaching out to some of your bigger contacts later?”

“Once we get a team established, that will be the next thing. We need to build our resume...so to speak...before anyone’s going to take us seriously.”

“And any word from Locus’ friend yet?”

“Not yet, but it’s only been a day.”

“Fair enough. Let me know when he gets back to you.”

“I will.”

“And when are you getting that retinal scan updated?”

“I’m going to talk to Carson, my boss, today. The problem is that he thinks I’m still in space. There’s a ship due to land at Chawla tonight. I’m going to talk to Marz about adding me to it’s itinerary. Once that happens, I’ll probably have to wait a day or so before I can go in to get it updated,” Fox explained.

“Just keep me updated with the process,” Kimball said. After that, there was a moment of silence, where Fox looked like she was waiting for her to say something. “Anything else?” Kimball asked.

And Fox turned her head away, looking troubled. “Actually yes. I probably should have brought this up first, to be honest. But last night I was contacted by a Charon representative,” she said, looking back at her.

Kimball had been halfway through taking a sip of her coffee when Fox mentioned Charon, and almost, _almost_ choked on it. Instead, she forced herself to swallow and coughed a few times into her shoulder, then looked back at the hologram, eyes watering. _“What?”_

“If we’re being honest, it was only a matter of time,” Fox said, pulling a face that Kimball couldn’t quite read.

“How--” Kimball set her coffee mug down on the table and shook her head to try to clear it. “How did they contact you? _Why_ were they _able_ to contact you? What aren’t you telling me?”

Fox took in a deep breath. “It’s...because I’m kinda...rich? It’s one of those things where I’m part of a demographic small enough that everyone knows everyone else. Like...we all get invited to the same fancy parties and shit. And both Charon and Emblem work with the U.N.S.C., so I’m not really surprised that he was able to get my contact info. Luckily it was just my laptop, so I don’t need to worry about him trying to trace calls or anything,” she explained.

None of this made Kimball feel any better. “Well, what did he _want?_ ”

“The representative mentioned that they believe a group of ‘terrorists’ might try to attack Emblem’s AI,” Fox replied, making air-quotes when she said the word ‘terrorists’. “She then went on to mention how said terrorists took down an AI stationed at a Charon research facility, and are believed to have departed for this planetary system. Which, y’know, sounds an _awful_ lot like they have some idea of what we’ve been up to.”

Kimball’s mind wandered to the report Grey had brought her earlier that morning regarding what she and Simmons found in Charon’s network, and felt her stomach churn. This was very, _very_ bad. “Do they know you’re on Earth?” she asked, feeling sick at the thought of it. If Hargrove had already figured out Fox and Locus’ location, then their mission had ended before it even started.

“No, actually. They know that a group of AI-wrecking terrorists are on Earth,” Fox replied with a small smile. “But they think that Pepper Matsukaze is still in space, and is scheduled to get on a ship that will bring her _back_ to the Sol System later today. At least, that’s what I told her I was doing when I video called her.”

Kimball took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said slowly. “And did she buy that?”

“Yeah, actually,” Fox replied.

Kimball let out a long, relieved sigh. “Did she say anything else?”

“She said that the chairman believes that these ‘terrorists’ will be trying to hack The Cerberus Protocol to ‘take justice into their own hands’ using the kill code I made for CORA. And then she said that they’d been examining the code and figured out a way to protect against it, which is...not the _best_ news. But thankfully we don’t really need it anymore since CORA’s offline,” Fox said.

“I’m guessing they offered to help defend the protocol?” Kimball asked. If what Fox had said about Hargrove wanting the database as leverage was true, then it made sense.

“Yeah. And I declined. Said it would take a really long time to process and get approval from Emblem, the U.N.S.C., _and_ the AI,” Fox replied. “So I told her I was coming to Earth to keep an eye on the system myself. Hopefully that’ll deter them from trying anything cute.”

Kimball stared at the floor, deep in thought. This wasn’t good news. If Hargrove was already moving to try to get his hands on that database, then they were already behind schedule. But something about this didn’t quite add up. She looked back at Fox and asked, “why didn’t they contact Carson with this? Why reach out to you instead?”

Fox pulled a face. “Probably because of an old connection that I didn’t realize was even going to be a problem until last night.”

 _Oh boy,_ Kimball thought. “What connection?”

Fox sighed. “My father was...a friend of Hargrove’s.”

Kimball stared. “And you never thought to bring this up? Fox, this is _important!”_

“I _know!_ But, I honestly didn’t think it was even going to be a _thing._ I mean, my dad’s _dead,_ and Hargrove had stronger ties to Carson. And I didn’t think it’d be an issue for anyone because Carson has a pretty strong sense of morality, and was pretty skeptical of Charon behind the scenes,” Fox replied.

Kimball rubbed her temples, feeling a headache beginning to form between them. “Fox, if this is going to work, I need you to tell me _everything,_ understand?”

“I know.”

 _“Even_ the things you think won’t matter.”

“Okay. I’m sorry.”

Kimball looked back at Fox, noting the guilty expression on her face and how she fidgeted with the cuff of her sleeve.

“Honestly, I kind of _forgot_ that my dad and Hargrove were friends. The last time I saw the two of them together was at a Christmas party when I was like, _ten,”_ Fox continued, looking away and tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “I honestly don’t even know what the extent of their relationship was. I mean, I was just a _kid.”_

And Kimball couldn’t help but feel a little guilty herself. “You really just forgot?” she asked.

“Yeah. I swear,” Fox replied with a nod.

Kimball sighed, closing her eyes, then opened them and softly said “okay. Okay, that’s fine.”

“Okay.”

“But I want you to look into this. Figure out how close your father was to Hargrove,” Kimball continued.

“I was going to,” Fox replied. “Depending on what I find, we might be able to use this to our advantage. If we can get Hargrove to think that I’m on his side, then we can play him.”

Kimball wondered if Fox could read her mind. “My thoughts exactly. But you need to be _careful._ Don’t take _any_ unnecessary risks, understand?”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

“Good,” Kimball said with a satisfied nod. “By the way, Grey and Simmons have begun combing through the files on Charon’s network. They managed to figure out the same thing that representative told you. Apparently a dropship picked up your slipspace field near _The Staff of Charon_.”

Fox frowned. “Katrina, the representative, implied she was on Earth. But I can’t imagine that she’d have come here from Hargrove’s ship _,_ especially since she’d have no reason to be on board given her position. I’d guess that she was either stationed here, or flew in from Io. When I get that retinal scan update, I’ll do some digging and see what I can find on her.”

“I’ll let Grey know too and see if she can find anything on the network,” Kimball said. “If Hargrove knows that we sent people to Earth, he may have found someone to try to stop you.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Fox said, shaking her head. “I’ll keep an ear to the ground and keep you updated on what I find.”

“Good,” Kimball said. “Anything else?”

“Nothing important...But how’s everything on your end looking?”

Kimball blinked, taken off guard by the question. “Things are...good. Productive. We’ve gotten some repairs done, and we’re looking to try to collect materials from some of the other facilities to expand headquarters here.”

“Well that’s good. How is everyone?”

“Fine. Same as they were when you left. Caboose asks about you a lot,” Kimball replied, realizing that Fox probably missed the Reds and Blues.

“That’s good,” Fox said, and for a moment she looked a little sad. But then she smiled and said, “well, if you don’t mind, tell Caboose I said ‘hi’.” She glanced at something off-camera, then looked back at Kimball. “I should probably get going. I have a _lot_ of work to do to get this team together.”

Kimball nodded. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Signing off.” She hit a button on the holo-table, and the image of Fox disappeared. She stood next to the table for a minute, sipping her coffee, staring at nothing in particular. Things on Earth were a lot more complicated than she had expected them to be, but knowing that Fox had a plan made her feel a little better.

She realized, with a deep sigh, that while the conversation with Fox had been stressful, she didn’t feel as tense as she had been the day Fox and Locus had left. Each day had been easier, and though it was a small blessing, she took it with gratitude. After everything they’d been through in the past few years on Chorus, it really did feel like they were at a turning point.

Kimball downed the rest of her coffee and returned the mug to her desk, trading it off for her helmet which she put on. Then she turned and stepped out of her office. She figured she may as well find Caboose. Hearing that Fox was thinking of him would undoubtedly make his day.

 

* * *

 

When Kimball signed off, the first thing that Fox did was call Carson. No sense in waiting any longer. Especially since they’d need database access once their team was built.

The man picked up with a cheerful greeting; “Pepper, my dear! I haven’t heard from you in ages!”

Fox grinned as she walked around the kitchen island and put a pot of coffee on. “Hi Mr. Carson! How are you?”

“Oh, I’m doing _splendid_ , my dear! How are you? Is that little excursion of yours going alright?”  
“Well, that’s actually what I’m calling you about,” Fox lied. “It ended early. Manning and I wrapped everything up last week.”

“ _Really?_ Well that’s great news! Are you planning on returning home soon, then?”

“In a few hours actually,” Fox replied, making a whirling motion in the air with a finger, knowing that Marz would pick it up. Hopefully she got the memo that she was supposed to change the itinerary. “I should be getting back sometime late tonight.”

“Excellent!” Carson exclaimed, right as Marz projected an image of a thumbs-up above the kitchen island.

“Which reminds me, I need to update my retinal scan. I haven’t done that in ages. Is there a chance I could come in for that sometime this week?”

“Ah, yes, yes, yes, of course! Give me a moment to find you a date.” Fox listened to Carson muttering to himself as he looked through his calendar. “How does this Saturday sound? I can get someone in early in the morning for you, say...eight? Perhaps we could get lunch afterwards, too?”

“That sounds perfect,” Fox replied, smiling. “Thank you, Mr. Carson.”

“I’m always happy to help, my dear! I look forward to seeing you!”

“I can’t wait! Bye!” Fox let out a happy sigh and tucked her phone into her pocket when Carson hung up, then turned her attention to Marz. “You have that itinerary updated?”

_“Done, and done.”_

“Perfect. What about those candidates?”

_“Baiting the fish hooks as we speak.”_

“Awesome, let me know when you’re about to send them out.”

_“Should I wake up Sleeping Beauty too?”_

Fox blinked, then looked in the direction of the guest room. “No, let him sleep. We don’t have anything to do today, anyways.”

_“Are you going to tell him everything you told Kimball?”_

Fox sighed. “I want him to trust me, so yeah.”

_“Alright.”_

Fox watched the coffee maker work for a few seconds, then remembered she needed to call Danny. She pulled out her phone and called his number.

It rang for a few seconds, then Danny finally picked up, greeting her with a groggy, “hello?”

“Hey, Danny! I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“Oh. _Oh!_ Uh...h-hi! Sorry! I just woke up. Um. Give me two seconds. I gotta--”

Fox listened patiently to the sound of what was likely rustling sheets, and Danny muttering something.

“Okay. Sorry. I just had to get my glasses. Um, did you need something?”

“I’m calling you about the job you agreed to. Remember how I said I’d call you back with a location and time?”

“Oh. Yeah! Let me just grab a pen...Hey what _is_ this job, by the way? I know that I’m supposed to be a driver, and that you told me a bit about it yesterday when I called to say yes, but like...you and those other guys you told me you were gonna add to the team are going to be like...hurting people, right?” Danny sounded uncertain.

“Sometimes,” Fox admitted. “But like I said, you won’t have to do any of that. And if you feel like you’re up for it, you can always let me know, and we’ll work with you a bit, okay?”

“Okay. And like...this Hargrove guy won’t know about me?”

“It’s unlikely. And we have ways of keeping you safe even if we can’t keep you anonymous.”

“Okay. That...that works. Um, so what’s the address?”

Fox gave it to him along with the time and date. “I hope you didn’t have any plans for Wednesday.”

“No. It’s not like I have a job to go to,” Danny replied, then quickly added, “other than this one, of course.”

Fox let out a small chuckle. “Alright, great. Meet us there. Oh, and my AI, Marz, is going to send an executable file to the desktop of your computer. It’s going to contain pretty much everything you need to know about the job. A lot of it is irrelevant to you, though, since you’re just going to be driving.”

“Oh, okay. I’ll look at that later.”

“Sounds good. I’ll see you Wednesday.”

“Sure thing! Thank you, Miss Fox!”

Fox hung up, poured herself a cup of coffee, and went and sat down at the kitchen island, popping her laptop open. The minute she did so, she found herself staring blankly at the screen, a single thought occupying her head. “Marz, we need a name, right?”

_“What?”_

“Like, for our team?”

_“Try The Miami Dolphins.”_

Fox gave the kitchen island a glare that she knew Marz could see. “That’s not funny.”

_“You literally have a laptop in front of you. Google something. Get ideas.”_

“Ugh,” Fox slouched in her chair. “Can’t you just come up with like...a cool name generator?”

_“I could, but I don’t want to.”_

“Fine,” Fox huffed, and typed ‘cool team names’ into the search bar. The names that came up were the opposite of what she’d asked for. “These are terrible.”

_“That’s because they were all envisioned by straight white men who think that predatory animals are the only things that you can name a group of people.”_

“Dolphins aren’t pred--Okay well they are, but you don’t _think_ of them that way.”

_“I do.”_

“You’re a _computer.”_

_“I reached metastability like...when you were five. I’m technically a person. I just have WiFi access.”_

“You’re impossible.”

_“But you love me anyways.”_

Fox sighed and scrolled through a few websites for ideas, growing mildly annoyed when nothing stuck out. “Is _baba yaga_ too cliche?”

_“Yes, and it’s also a singular noun, so it wouldn’t-- oh hey, it’s alive!”_

Fox blinked when Marz suddenly changed the subject, and looked back to see Locus standing at the entrance to the hall, glaring at the kitchen island, which had an image of an emoji sticking its tongue out projecting from it. “Marz, please,” Fox said disdainfully when she saw the emoji.

_“What? It’s like nine in the morning. Aren’t you military types used to waking up at four A.M.?”_

_“Marz.”_

_“Aaaaand, casting!”_

Fox rolled her eyes, watching as Locus wordlessly made his way over to the coffee pot and poured himself a cup. “You sleep well?” she asked when he took a sip.

He just nodded.

Fox felt a small smile creep onto her face. It had barely been a week, and she had already figured out that he wasn’t a morning person. At least coffee seemed to make his mood a little better. She looked back at the team names she had pulled up, sighed, and closed her laptop.

 _“No dice?”_ Marz asked.

“Nothing worth writing down for later,” Fox replied, earning a curious look from Locus. “Team names,” she explained. “For when we get everyone on board.”

He just raised an eyebrow at her, but said nothing.

 _“She didn’t think The Miami Dolphins was a good name for you guys._ **_I_ ** _thought it was pretty funny.”_

“You have a terrible sense of humor,” Fox replied.

_“Who do you think I get it from?”_

“Guilty,” Fox sighed, raising a hand. She scratched an itch on her cheek next to one end of her scar, then looked up at Locus. “Want breakfast?”

“I’m fine for now,” he replied.

“Suit yourself,” Fox said. “I ate an hour ago.”

“What kept you up so late?”

Fox looked back up at him, raising her eyebrows, then pulled a face. “Nothing good,” she replied.

That caught Locus’ attention, and he gave her what might have been a look of concern. “What happened?”

Fox grimaced and glanced away. “Uh so...you know how I said that all billionaires know each other?”

Locus gave her a blank, tired look, and Fox remembered that he had _literally_ just woken up.

“Yeah, you’re right, fuck the exposition, we’re jumping right into it,” Fox said quickly, changing course. She took a deep breath, then said “so my dad was friends with Hargrove. Boom, there it is. Go bananas.”

And Locus just stared at her, then looked over at the kitchen island where Marz was, then back to Fox. Then he took a sip of his coffee before setting the mug down on the counter next to him before looking back at Fox, who had near-about bitten through her lip from tension and said “I know.”

Fox blinked. “What and _how_ ...the _entire_ fuck?”

“Your voice carries,” Locus said simply. “I heard you tell Kimball.”

Fox sat back, staring at him in disbelief, then looked over at where Marz had projected a text emoji reading “:o” before turning back to him and asking “am I really _that_ loud?”

“You are.”

“Huh,” Fox said, deflating a little bit and turning her gaze towards the kitchen counter. “Well I guess that’s...good to know...kinda.” She looked back at him and asked “so...thoughts? ‘Cause like...this is a _thing.”_

“You told Kimball you forgot they were friends, is that true?” Locus countered.

“Y-yes?” Fox replied. “I mean, it was always _there_ in the back of my mind, but it wasn’t until this Katrina chick called last night representing Charon or whatever and mentioned that my dad was friends with the chairman that I really remembered that they were probably like, _business_ friends.”

“Katrina is the representative you told Kimball about?”

“Yup. I still have the video if you want to see it, or I can just upload it to Marz’s server and you can watch it later. It’s up to you,” Fox replied. Then she frowned and said “you still haven’t told me how you feel about any of this.”

“Does it matter?”

Fox fixed him in a light glare. _“Yes_ it matters! You’re my partner, and we’re gonna be stuck in an apartment together for a while. So if something bugs you, you need to say something, otherwise we’re gonna wind up hating each other.”

He held her gaze evenly for a moment, then looked away and crossed his arms. “How will this affect our operation?” he asked.

“Ah-ah- _ah,_ my question first,” Fox said.

“I’m trying to answer it,” Locus replied, annoyed.

Fox narrowed her eyes at him a moment, then leaned back in her seat and said “it shouldn’t. Not right away. You heard the conversation I had with Kimball. We’re going to try to use it to our advantage. Whether or not it works depends on how desperate Hargrove is for help, and how much he thinks he can rely on old friendships to get it.”

“Do you think you can make it work?”

Fox let out a long sigh and rolled her eyes, growing _very_ tired of the deflecting game Locus was playing with her. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Probably. This is kind of my area of expertise anyways, but I’d really need to feel it out a little bit first before I can form like an actual legitimate opinion.”

Locus looked back at her, but didn’t say anything, and seemed to scrutinize her.

Fox met his gaze for a moment, then cracked a lopsided grin and asked “you’re not gonna tell me how you feel about this, are you?”

Locus looked away again, but seemed to be contemplating whether or not he wanted to say anything. After a moment, he sighed and said “how I feel doesn’t matter. You’re in charge of this operation, not me.”

And Fox felt something cold stab her straight through the heart. _Jesus, he’s way worse off than I thought,_ she mused inwardly. “Okay, I get it,” she said slowly. “We’re not there yet. You don’t know me that well, and...y’know talking about _feelings_ or whatever is like, not something you do with total strangers. So I get it.” And she watched him a moment, noting how he seemed to relax just a little bit upon hearing her decision to not pursue the topic any further. “But just so you know, this _is_ a safe space, and I _am_ on your side, and how you feel _does_ matter. You don’t have to tell me everything, but I’d like you to at least give me an idea of...I don’t know, what you want to get out of this, and stuff. Not right now, it’s morning, so fuck that. I don’t wanna think about _anything_ right now, especially after an all-nighter. But just...we’re a team, okay? And sure I might be in charge of things officially, but like...this is your mission too. So you might as well weigh in where it counts.”

Locus didn’t say anything, and didn’t look at her right away either. In fact, he seemed _very_ interested in the cabinets to his right.

“Hey, you got me?” Fox asked, praying he hadn’t just shut her out while she had been trying to get through to him.

And he closed his eyes for a moment before looking back at her, and the lack of startlement in the movement was enough to tell Fox that he had been listening to her all along. And he held her gaze for a moment, then said “I understand.”

Fox raised an eyebrow at him and quirked a smile. “Good,” she said. “Now if you don’t mind, I’d like your expert opinion on something.”

“What is it?”

“What do _you_ think our team name should be?” Fox asked.

Locus gave her a look of mild annoyance. “We don’t need a team name.”

 _“I’m telling you people, The Miami Dolphins is where it’s at!”_ Marz exclaimed. _“I mean, it’s not like they can file a copyright claim for a team that doesn’t exist anymore.”_

Fox chose not to reply to her and instead met Locus’ gaze with a look of exasperation that she _hoped_ conveyed how she felt about the suggestion.

“Why don’t you ask one of the recruits?” Locus suggested.

“That’s a good idea,” Fox said, brightening a little. “If we haven’t come up with anything when we meet them, I’ll do that.”

Locus nodded. “Speaking of which, did you reach out to the candidates yet?”

“That’s what- I don’t know if you heard it- but when Marz said ‘casting’, that’s what that was,” Fox replied.

“I take it we won’t hear back from them right away,” he said, leaning back against the counter. He was silent for a moment, and Fox could tell he was thinking about something. Then he asked, “any word from Siris?”

“Not yet,” Fox replied. “But I’ll let you know the second I hear from him.” She watched him for a moment, noting how he didn’t make eye-contact with her. _I guess the whole thing is still kind of awkward for him,_ she thought.

“What happens now?” Locus asked suddenly, and Fox jumped a little when she was pulled from her thoughts.

But she met his gaze with a smile, and said, “now we wait.”

 

 

* * *

 

It had been several days since Fox and Locus left for Earth, and things had finally settled down. In fact, things were beginning to slowly return to a semblance of normalcy. Tucker noted this with a small smile under his helmet as he listened to Simmons and Grif bicker over something silly. _Like an old married couple,_ he thought, shaking his head.

He was on his way to a patrol. Wash was supposed to be joining him. Chances were, he was already out there. Tucker made his way out of the motor pool, Simmons and Grif’s voices fading into the distance as he stepped into the hall.

He didn’t get far before he heard Andersmith’s voice exclaim,“Good morning, Captain Tucker!” And he stopped and turned and waited for the latter to catch up.

“Hi, Smith,” Tucker greeted when Andersmith reached him. He turned and continued down the hall, with Andersmith keeping pace at his side.

“How are you today?” Andersmith asked.

“Tired. Bored. Shit’s too quiet around here,” Tucker confessed.

Andersmith gave a small laugh. “Well, that’s probably because Locus is gone. Nobody has anything to talk about anymore.”

“I guess.”

“Is something wrong?”

Tucker glanced over at Andersmith. Truth was, there was something that had been sitting in the back of his head for a while. Something that he knew he should have taken care of a while ago, but never found the time to.

He still hadn’t talked to Carolina.

“No, dude, I’m fine,” Tucker lied. “It’s just really fuckin’ quiet around here, and I want something to _do_ , is all.”

Andersmith nodded sagely. “I can relate to that. It feels odd that we don’t have a threat to worry about.”

Tucker remembered that Andersmith had to have been just a kid when the war started. “You’ll get used to it eventually,” he offered. He had to say _something._

“I hope so,” Andersmith said with a chuckle. Then, “are you on patrol?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. That’s where I’m headed,” Tucker replied.

“That’s why I asked,” Andersmith said patiently.

“Are you?”

“Yes sir.”

Tucker nodded, turning his head forward as the sunlight from the entrance to the cave headquarters was in filtered through his visor. As they stepped out of the cave, he could see Wash standing a little ways away with his back to them. When they got closer, he turned and watched them approach.

“What took you so long?”

“Dude, we’re right on time,” Tucker protested.

“On time means you’re late,” Wash scolded.

Tucker rolled his eyes and let out a groan. “Okay, _dad._ Can we just do our fucking patrol?”

Wash tilted his head slightly, then sighed and said. “Alright, let’s go.”

They followed the trail in silence, and Tucker watched as the cool shadows cast by the morning sun grew shorter. When they finally reached their destination, he wandered off a little from Wash and Andersmith, facing the treeline.

So much had happened in such a short period of time. Sure it was a couple of months since the mission to Nalome, but it didn’t _feel_ like it. Tucker couldn’t believe that in all that time, he hadn’t found a chance to talk to Carolina. The more he thought about it, the more it upset him. So he pushed the thought out of his head and focused on listening to the wind shift the trees overhead.

It was nice. Not having to worry. Not having to keep his guard up. Not having the threat of Charon constantly looming in the background. Tucker speculated this for a while, glancing back over his shoulder when he heard Wash walking towards him. The guy had such a distinct walk. It was kind of funny. Tucker turned to face Wash, drawing in a breath, about to greet him, when Wash suddenly said, “shh!”

Tucker froze and listened. “What’s going on?” he asked after a moment over comms.

“You don’t hear that?” Wash asked.

“Hear _what?_ ” Tucker shot back, frustrated at how _dramatic_ Wash was being right now.

“It sounds like bugs,” Wash replied.

Tucker stared at him, then looked back towards the forest, really listening this time. And yeah...he _could_ make out the sounds of what might have been alien crickets or something, chirping in the undergrowth.

“The civil war chased most of the animals away. This is the first time I’ve heard _anything_ like this on patrol,” Wash said softly, and there was something like wonder in his voice.

Tucker looked over at him, and felt a small smile spread across his face when he saw that for the first time in a long time, there was no tension in Wash’s shoulders. He actually looked at ease. “It’s nice,” Tucker said. Then quickly turned his head back towards the forest when Wash looked over at him, feeling his face get hot.

“It is,” Wash agreed, and Tucker mouthed a silent “thank you” when it didn’t appear that he had noticed.

The two sat in silence for a minute longer, listening to the sounds of the forest. Eventually, Tucker felt a goofy grin break under his helmet, partially fuelled by the adrenaline rush gained from his earlier comment. “Dude, are we having a moment?” he asked, looking over at Wash.

“Huh?” Wash asked.

Tucker snickered. “We are _so_ having a moment.”

And Wash stiffened a little at that. “I-- I’m just-- It’s a nice morning! That’s all!”

Under his helmet, Tucker’s grin got bigger. He shook his head and chuckled. “Okay, okay, Wash. You’re right. I’m sorry. I won’t point it out when we have moments together ever again.”

“That’s not--” Wash spluttered, then turned his head away with a huff.

Tucker knew his face was beet red under his helmet. He watched Wash for a moment longer, then, smile fading, looked back over towards where Andersmith was looking over the edge of the cliff. “Can I ask you something?” he said absently, not looking towards Wash.

“Depends,” Wash said, with a note of caution in his voice.

“I’m being serious.”

“Holy shit. That’s four times in the past six months. What did you do with Tucker?” Wash asked flatly.

Tucker gave him a look, then continued. “How is Carolina holding up?”

Wash seemed taken aback by the question. “She’s…doing better. Why?”

“I just haven’t had the time to sit down and talk to her, is all.”

“And you...feel bad about that?” Wash asked, phrasing his words more like a statement than an actual question.

“I guess? I mean...Church was my best friend. But I know how important he was to her. And I guess...I don’t really like seeing her upset,” Tucker said, trying to find the words to put his thoughts together coherently.

Wash stared at him for a moment, then said. “You’ve come a long way, Captain Tucker.”

“What?”

“You’re...you’ve learned to empathize better with people,” Wash elaborated.

“Dude, come on. I’ve _always_ been Mister Sensitive!”

“Tucker, I’m trying to be genuine with you here.”

Tucker pursed his lips under his helmet. In truth, Wash’s praise had taken him off guard. “Uh...thanks. I guess.”

There was an uncomfortable silence between the two of them for a moment, and Tucker found himself listening to the sound of Andersmith humming something to himself a little ways away.

“So you should talk to Carolina,” Wash said suddenly, breaking the silence. Tucker had the impression that he felt just as awkward as he looked.

“Yeah. Uh. What do I say?” Tucker asked, feeling his chest clench with anxiety.

“Just...be honest. Don’t talk about anything you’re not ready to. But be honest. She doesn’t blame you for anything,” Wash said. “And honestly, I feel like she’d probably appreciate it.”

“Okay,” Tucker said, letting out a long sigh.

“I guess the good news is that you have the rest of this patrol to think of what you want to say,” Wash added. Then he turned and started away. “Just take it slow,” he said as he walked past. “You’ll be fine. This will be good for both of you.”

Tucker watched as he walked back towards the trail, then looked away. He let out another sigh and sat down cross-legged on the ground. Time to run through a million different ways to word what he wanted to say.

_Great._

Sometimes he hated how much sense Wash made.

 

 

* * *

 

“You’re really serious about this, aren’t you?”

Siris sighed and stared out of the car window in the direction of his daughter’s school. “Honey, I think it’s a good choice. The money--”

“I know, I know. And I know that she told you she could make sure that nothing happened to our daughter by putting us on that... _list._ But what about _you?_ I already worry enough as it is with all that bounty hunter stuff you do!”

“Meg, it’s going to be pretty much the _same_ as the bounty hunter job.”

“I know. But I want you to be safe. I really, really want you to be safe.”

Siris sighed, running a hand through his hair. “I know,” he replied softly. “She said if it gets too much, I can always leave.”

“I know. But I also know _you._ And I need you to promise me that you won’t push yourself. And that you _will_ leave when it’s time to, okay?”

A small smile crept onto Siris’ face. She knew him too well. A side-effect of being married; not that he was complaining. “I promise.”

“Okay. Don’t call her when Olivia’s in the car.”

“I _won’t_. I’m not going to give our daughter nightmares.”

There was a small laugh at the other end of the line. “Okay. I love you. I’ll see you tonight.”

“Love you too,” Siris replied, then hung up, looking over when he heard the school bell ring. A minute later, kids were flooding out of the doors, some heading for the buses around the corner, and others heading towards the line of cars he was sitting in. When he spotted his daughter with her bright orange backpack walking towards him, he smiled.

“Hi dad!” she exclaimed, sliding into the backseat behind him and shoving her book bag onto the floor.

“Hi, Monkey. How was school?”

“Fun! Naomi and I caught a _ton_ of caterpillars at recess today!”

“Really?” Siris asked, pulling out of the carpool line and onto the main road. “Did you learn anything new?”

“Yeah. You can’t put caterpillars in your pockets to bring home. Apparently it’s against the rules.”

“Oh, _Olivia_ , you didn’t ruin your shorts, did you?” Siris asked, glancing back at her.

“No. I didn’t _crush_ any of them. But Miss Tatem made me bring them back outside.”

Siris let out a small relieved laugh. Meg would have had a _fit_ if their daughter came home with bug guts in her pockets.

“Did you do anything cool today?” Olivia asked.

 _“Me?”_ Siris asked, making a big show of acting surprised. “Well, I paid some bills. Sent some emails. Went to the grocery store. Went for a run. Took Noodle for a walk. Gave Noodle a _bath_ because she decided she wanted to jump in a puddle, and I didn’t want her tracking mud everywhere. Cut the grass. Showered. And picked you up from school.”

“Dad, I said _cool._ None of that was _cool!”_

Siris laughed. “You don’t think any of that is cool?”

_“No!”_

Siris grinned. “Then stop growing up so fast.”

“I can’t help it!” Olivia exclaimed. “Doctor Smith said I was going through a growth spurt.”

“I heard.”

“She also said that’s why I keep getting nosebleeds.”

“She’s right.”

“Did you get a lot of nosebleeds when you were a kid?”

“So many.”

“Like a thousand?”

“Way more.”

“Wow.” In the rear-view mirror, Siris could see his daughter’s eyes get huge. “I’ve only had probably twelve in my whole life. How are you even still _alive?!”_

“You’re dad’s a tough guy.”

“Naomi told me her dad said you probably use cars as weights. But I said that’s not true because when you got that new dresser for my room you needed that other guy’s help to bring it upstairs,” Olivia said.

“Well, I just didn’t want it scratching up the walls. So I asked for his help.”

“But _could_ you pick up a car?”

“Maybe a little one.”

“Like the one Mister Benson drives?”

“Sure.”

“Can you try?”

“I’d have to ask him for permission first.”

“If he says yes, I wanna see it,” Olivia declared.

“Tell you what, if he says yes, I’ll let you take a day off from school to watch. Then you can film it on your phone and show all your friends the day after, okay?”

“Deal!”

Siris glanced back when he heard Olivia unzip her backpack and ruffle some papers. “You got a lot of homework?”

“Not really. I just gotta finish my science project for Mister Patterson’s class.”

“Want me to help you with it after soccer practice?”

“If you wanna. I can do it though.”

“Okay,” Siris replied, turning into their neighborhood. He stole a glance at the time on his dashboard. “You’ve got ten minutes, Monkey. Make them count,” he said as he pulled into their driveway.

Olivia was out of the car and through the front door the minute he pulled the keys out. He watched the front door swing shut behind her, with a smile. It faded, however, when he pulled his phone and Fox’s business card out and dialed the number on it. When Fox picked up, he said, “my wife and I did some talking. Keep my family safe, and I’m in.”

“Copy that, Family Man,” came the cheery reply. “Now grab a pen. I have an address for you.”

Siris leaned into the car and pulled a pen and a tiny notepad out of the storage area in the middle console. He ripped off the grocery list on the top sheet, crumpled it, put it in his pocket, and set the notebook on the roof of his car, pen ready. “Got it.”

As Fox gave him the address and the time to arrive, he wrote it down, then ripped it out of the notebook, folded it, and stuck it in the cup holder in the middle console. “Anything I should bring?”

“Yourself. A sense of humor. Potluck, if you feel like it.”

Siris sighed. “So, nothing, then?”

“Nope.”

“Will Sam be there?”

“Yup. So will the others.”

“Sounds good.”

“This is going to be _awesome!”_ Fox nearly sang the last word. Siris could feel her excitement emanating through the phone. He wished he could feel the same. “Thank you so much! You’re not going to regret this! I’ll see you soon!” And then she hung up.

Siris pocketed his phone, hoping she was right, and looked over when Olivia came back out through the front door in her soccer uniform. “Ready, Monkey?” he asked, forcing a smile onto his face.

“I was _born_ ready!”

 _Now_ the smile on his face was real. He chuckled and said. “Alright, kiddo. Let’s roll.”

 

* * *

 

“He said _yes!_ ” Fox exclaimed in an operatic voice, holding her phone up like it was some kind of trophy.

“You don’t have to shout. I’m right here,” Locus replied, noting how pretty much everyone within earshot had looked their way when she’d spoken.

“Sorry. I’m just _really_ happy that he agreed to work with us,” Fox said, a big grin on her face.

“You didn’t need to announce it to the entire _store.”_ If there were two things Locus hated, it was shopping, and having attention drawn towards him. And he was stuck with both.

“Alright, alright. I’m sorry. I have issues with controlling my volume when I get excited. It’s a thing,” Fox replied, waving him off. She turned and walked down the aisle, the clothes she had selected for herself draped over one arm. “You can pick stuff out too, you know,” she said over her shoulder.

Locus gave her a look. Everything here was _ridiculously_ overpriced. He had no interest in even _looking_ for anything. “I don’t get paid as much as you do,” he replied.

“Sunshine, you’re not _buying_ ,” Fox replied, looking back at him and rolling her eyes.

He froze. “You’re not paying for me,” he said flatly.

“Honey, I’m worth _twenty-six billion credits._ I could pay for everyone here. So don’t feel bad about it. And if it’s a pride thing, just pretend it’s your birthday.”

It wasn’t a pride thing so much as it was a principal thing. Sure, Fox could afford it, but he didn’t want her to feel like she _had_ to go around paying for everything. “You don’t have to,” he said.

“I know,” Fox replied, holding a shirt against her chest. “What do you think? Too middle-aged soccer-mom?” she asked.

Locus stared at the shirt. “You want _my_ opinion?” he asked dubiously.

Fox made a face, “yeah, no. Good point. Especially since you own like three of the same shirt in different colors.” She looked down at the shirt. “I think it’s too soccer-mom-ish,” she declared, and put it back on the rack. She looked back at him with a thoughtful expression, then said, “I’m going to pick some stuff out for you.”

“Fox…”

“It’ll be _fun._ Go into it with an open _mind.”_

Locus could think of a million other things he’d _rather_ do. Jumping off a five-story building was currently at the top of his list. But instead of voicing this, he just followed her sulkily into the men’s section.

“So what’s your style? Like if you could wear literally anything you wanted, what would it be?” Fox asked, looking back at him.

Locus just gave her an exasperated look.

“Hmm...I feel like you’re a mix between like...hot single dad with a touch of punk rock,” Fox said after some thought.

_“What.”_

“No, no, no, listen. Just hear me out for like, two seconds,” Fox said quickly, putting up a hand. “Like you’ve got the single dad look, but you give off a vibe like you throwdown with jerks who disrespect women as like an afternoon activity or something. And then there’s the whole military look you’ve got going on too. Probably should take that into account too.”

 _“What_ are you _talking_ about?”

“Your _look,_ ” Fox said.

“I don’t--”

“Okay, okay, so you know how _I_ look like a hip forty-something year-old who’s embracing her age and rocking cute, kinda vintage styles? High-waisted jeans and cute, loose tops kinda deal?” Fox asked, striking a pose.

Locus blinked. “How you dress, you mean?” Why hadn’t she just worded it like _that?_

“Well, _yeah_ , but also like, the _image_ it presents,” Fox replied. “So for example, if you had never met me before, and you saw me on the street dressed like this, what would you think?”

“Nothing.”

Fox’s shoulders sagged and she gave him an annoyed ‘you’re not trying’ look. “Just... _indulge_ me. _Please.”_

Locus sighed. “I’d wonder how old you _actually_ are.”

Fox made a face. “Wow. Why, do I dress younger than I should?”

“I...I answered your _question.”_ What more did she want from him?

Fox sighed dramatically. “Okay, well, so _that’s_ the _look_ I give off. I guess. And that’s what I was getting at. Outfit equals look. Look equals the first impression you have on people. Your first impression determines whether or not people think you’re someone they want to _talk_ to. Get it?”

And he _did_. But it didn’t make him any less annoyed. “Just...do what you’re going to do.”

Fox gave him a look that he couldn’t quite read, then turned and wandered off through the aisles. “I want you looking too!” she called back without turning her head.

Locus watched her go, then looked around, taking a deep breath. Shopping was near the top of his list of things he absolutely did not like doing, but it looked like he didn’t have a choice.

He picked out a few things, trying his hardest to get into it. Especially after the interaction he’d just had with Fox. He couldn’t help but feel a little bad about it. The more he thought about it, the more he realized it had been like pulling teeth for her to just have a conversation with him. And here she was just trying to do something _nice._

 _Nice going,_ he thought bitterly, looking over when he saw Fox heading back towards him, arms full of clothes.

“What did you find?” she asked.

“Just...a few things,” he replied.

“Neat. I found a _lot_ of things,” Fox declared, and deposited a bunch of clothes into his arms.

Locus looked at them. She’d actually done...really good. A lot of what she’d picked up was right up his alley. Somehow that made him feel worse. “Look, I’m...sorry...for earlier.”

Fox blinked, and the smile on her face faded a little. “No, dude. It’s cool. Like if anything, you had a point. I mean, I’m _forty--”_

“No, that’s not- I’m not--” _Good at apologies or social situations or being a decent human being in general?_ “You look fine.”

And her smile was back now, but it was cynical. “Wait, you don’t think you hurt my feelings back there, did you?”

“I... _yes?_ ”

“I’ve worked in male-dominated fields my whole life, honey. I’ve got thick skin,” Fox replied. “And besides, you’re out of your element, and also just a pretty blunt person in general. So I’m not _mad.”_

“That doesn’t make it right,” he said, looking her in the eye.

“Mmm,” Fox nodded, then chuckled. “You’re a big dork, you know that?”

He stared at her.

“Come on,” she said, turning and waving for him to follow her. “Let’s go try this stuff on.”

 

* * *

 

Patrol was, of course, uneventful, which somehow only made Tucker more anxious. As he split off from Wash and Andersmith and headed through the halls, he ran through every possible version of his imminent interaction with Carolina. Why did this have to be so _hard?_

He pulled off his helmet, sucking in the cool air being pumped through headquarters. _Okay, Tucker, you got this,_ he thought. Wash had told him that Carolina was probably helping with repairs near the east wing. So that’s where he was headed.

He made his way slowly in that direction, for once, grateful when he got stopped for a few minutes by Caboose, who engaged him in a conversation that he only half-listened to. When he finally reached his destination, it took him little time to actually locate Carolina.

She was helping a few of Kimball’s men lift a twisted support beam out of the way, appearing to be handling most of the weight, while the other soldiers tried to make it look like they were assisting somehow.

Tucker waited until they had cleared the support beam out of the construction area, throwing it down with a loud clang that was followed immediately by Carolina saying, “good work, everyone!” before he decided to get her attention. She turned in his direction, and he waved to her, watching as she glanced around to make sure no one else needed her before she approached.

“What do you need, Tucker?” she asked, sounding a little out of breath, but still fresh.

“Actually…” Tucker suddenly wished that he’d kept his helmet on so she couldn’t see whatever nonsense his face was doing. “I was hoping we could talk for a few minutes?”

Carolina took her hands off of her hips and tilted her head slightly. “Okay…” she said, a mixture of surprise and caution in her voice.

“But like, not here,” Tucker added.

“What’s wrong?” Carolina asked, growing suspicious.

“Nothing’s wrong. But...can we go somewhere quieter?” Tucker asked. “I promise it’ll be quick.”

Carolina looked back over her shoulder at the soldiers at work, then turned back to him with a sigh. “Fine. Lead the way.”

And so Tucker led her to the hangar, which was mostly empty save for a few men working on one of the Pelicans. But he doubted they’d bother anyone. Once they were a good enough distance away from the workers, he stopped and turned to face Carolina, who had crossed her arms.

“Well?” she asked. “Are you going to tell me what this is about?”

Tucker drew in a deep breath. _Okay, here we go._ “It’s about Church.”

Carolina tensed just enough for Tucker to notice, and when she spoke, her voice was tight. “What about him?”

“Look...uh...I know you don’t really...usually talk to me about...stuff,” Tucker began, fidgeting with his helmet in his hands, but not putting it on. “But I guess I just wanted to say...that I’m sorry,” he said, looking back up at her.

Carolina stared at him, falling silent for a very long time. Tucker was beginning to think that he had said something wrong when she finally spoke again. “I--...It wasn’t your fault.”

“I--” Tucker sucked in another deep breath. “People keep telling me that,” he said, trying to dismiss his guilt with a forced chuckle.

“Because it’s the truth.”

Tucker looked away, swallowing hard. “Yeah...I guess...I just know that he was basically your little brother. Kinda.”

“And he was _your_ best friend,” Carolina said firmly.

This wasn’t going at all where Tucker had wanted it to go. “Yeah. Yeah he was.” Tucker turned his gaze back down towards his helmet. “How are you, uh, doing, by the way?” he asked, feeling a little awkward.

Carolina sighed, and Tucker was certain that she was about to make up some bullshit about how she was fine. So when she said, “it’s been difficult,” he was thrown more than a little off guard.

 _Holy shit she’s being sincere with me,_ Tucker thought.

“What’s that face for?” Carolina asked suddenly, sounding irritated.

And Tucker realized that his jaw had dropped, and that he was staring at her like she was some sort of cryptid. “Uh. Nothing. Sorry. I just...uh…”

“You were expecting a different answer.”

“Yeah…”

“You’re being honest with me. It’s...only right that I do the same,” Carolina said, looking away.

She fell silent after that, and Tucker tried to think of something to say. Something that would help move them both forward. “Uh...do you want to talk about it?”

Carolina looked back at him, and even though he couldn’t see her face, he knew how tired she felt. “I already talked to Wash. On Nalome. It...helped.”

“Well, yeah, but you’re still obviously upset about it,” Tucker pointed out.

“It’s like you said; he was like a brother to me,” Carolina said simply. She shifted her weight, and looked less like she was crossing her arms, and more like she was hugging herself. “After…” she drew in a deep breath. “After we tracked down the Director, he...Epsilon was all I had left. He was always sort of... _there._ And now he’s not. I don’t have any family left.”

“Whoah, hey, that’s not true!” Tucker exclaimed. “You have _us!_ You’re like the cool older sister that keeps our shit together.” And he couldn’t _believe_ he was admitting that, but he _hated_ how sullen Carolina sounded.

And Carolina gave him an odd look. “Thank you...Tucker,” she said, sounding shocked.

Tucker gave her what he hoped was a smile.

And there was more silence following that, and Carolina looked like she was thinking hard about something. Finally, she said, “how have you been doing? After what happened on _The Staff of Charon?_ ”

Tucker felt a stab of pain in his chest. “Uh…” He _really_ didn’t want to talk about himself right now. “Y’know. I’ve been...uh...dealing with it?” He gave her a forced, goofy grin and a wink.

“ _Tucker.”_

Tucker let the facade drop. He scuffed at the floor with a heel, watching dust and sand particles swirl away across the concrete as he did so. “I...um...maybe haven’t been doing so great.”

“Are you sleeping?”

Tucker gave her a surprised look. “No,” he admitted, wondering how she had known. “I...uh...like you know how when you stare at a lightbulb and then you see like, the wires glowing in your vision for a while afterwards? It’s like that, but when I sleep. And it’s not lights...it’s Church.”

“You’re dreaming about it,” Carolina said, nodding. “That...makes sense. Have you talked to Grey?”

“No. She can’t do anything,” Tucker sighed. He frowned, staring at the floor. “It’s so fucking stupid. He died because of that fucking Meta armor. He could still be here.”

“We can’t change what happened,” Carolina said. “No matter how much we wish we could. But… we’re a team. And we can get through this together.”

Tucker let out a sigh. “Yeah,” he said. “I know. Thanks, Carolina.”

Carolina gave him a nod.

Tucker gave her a small smile, then cleared his throat and asked. “Uh...so what are you guys going to do with the Meta’s armor?”

Carolina looked away. “Grey’s been examining it to try to see what can be learned from it. But after that...I don’t know. I’ll talk to Wash. Maine was his friend too.”

And Tucker remembered who the Meta used to be. And he suddenly felt guilty about his earlier comment. “Okay.”

Carolina nodded to herself, then looked back at him. “So...is this it?”

“Huh? Oh. Uh...yeah.”

Carolina uncrossed her arms. “Thank you.”

Tucker gave her an odd look. “For...talking to you?”

“It’s...something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time. We were both close with Epsilon, and we should have done this sooner. I guess I just didn’t know where to start,” Carolina confessed.

And Tucker had to force himself to maintain a neutral expression and not look completely surprised. “Uh...yeah... no problem.” And he fell silent after that, and got the sense that Carolina was waiting for him to say something else. But he wasn’t sure what.

Thankfully, Carolina spoke up and said, “so...I still have work to do. And I’m sure you do too. But I’m glad we had this talk.”

“Yeah,” Tucker said. “Same.”

Carolina nodded, then turned and started away. “I’ll see you later,” she said over her shoulder.

Tucker just gave her a wave, waiting until she was out of sight. Then he let out a long sigh, and leaned back against a nearby Pelican. “Holy fuuuuuck,” he groaned, burying his face in his free hand. He stayed like that for a moment, then dropped his hand back to his side, feeling his adrenaline rush finally beginning to fade. Despite this, he couldn’t help but let a small smile onto his face.

That hadn’t been completely horrible. And honestly, he felt...a little better. Straightening up, he put his helmet back on, stiffening when he heard his stomach growl. It occurred to him that he hadn’t had breakfast yet.

“Alright, I hear you,” he said when his stomach growled again. “Let’s go get something to eat.”

 

 

* * *

 

Sujan ran a hand through his hair, staring at the white-tiled floor of the hospital, listening to the EKG machine beep in synch with his sister’s heart rate. This was her third surgery this year. If someone had told him that he would be using what little inheritance money their grandparents had left them to keep his sister’s insides from making her sick before they’d both enlisted as Marines, he never would have let her sign up. And yet here they were, on a planet hundreds of lightyears away from the system they had been born in.

“She should be waking up in the next minute.”

Sujan looked over when the nurse on the other side of the bed his sister was in spoke up. He nodded, then looked at his sister. She was so much paler and thinner than she had been before the war. Back then, she had been filled with laughter and excitement, always wanting to explore in the woods behind their parents’ farm. She started to stir, and he took her hand, careful of the IV sticking out of her skin. He wondered if he’d ever see her look the way she did back then again.

“Aliya,” he called softly when her eyelids fluttered.

Her face screwed up, and she reached with her free hand to paw at her eyes. “Ugh,” she said, “Suj?”

“I’m right here,” he replied. “How do you feel?”

“Gross,” she said, blinking hard several times, fighting to wake up.

“Aliya, I know it’s hard, but you can’t go back to sleep, okay?” the nurse said, leaning in slightly.

“Are you kidding me? I’m wide awake,” Aliya said, and Sujan couldn’t help but allow a smile to creep across his face. She struggled a little bit, finally managing to keep her eyes open and focus, looking over at him. “You look as bad as I feel,” she remarked.

“It’s been a tough day,” Sujan replied honestly.

“Lucky I got to sleep through it then,” Aliya replied, wetting her lips with her tongue, and swallowing a few times, pulling a face. “Can I have some water?”

“I can get you a small cup in a minute, but we’re pumping fluids into you with the IV as well,” the nurse replied. “The surgery was successful. But we _are_ going to keep you overnight to make sure that you remain stable,” she explained.

Aliya looked over at Sujan, worry on her face. “Can we afford that?” she asked.

“I already talked to my boss. I’m going to be picking up extra shifts for the next month,” Sujan replied. “We’ll be okay.”

Aliya frowned. “Okay.”

“I’ll go get you that water,” the nurse said, then set the call button attached to the wall with a cord next to her hand. “If you need something, press that.” Then she was gone.

Sujan was quiet for a moment, thinking of nothing in particular, looking at the golden light of the late afternoon sun through the blinds. His attention was drawn back to Aliya when she spoke up suddenly, saying, “this fucking sucks.”

Sujan blinked when he saw that there were the beginnings of tears in her eyes. “Hey, I know. I know. But we’re going to be okay.”

“No we’re not. I’m so tired of being sick. I’m so tired of being in the hospital all the time, and having to rely on other people to take care of me,” she said bitterly, tears rolling down her cheeks.

Sujan reached up and thumbed them away. “It’s not going to be forever,” he said. Though, deep down, that wasn’t a promise he was sure he could keep. His sister’s condition hadn’t gotten any better in the years since the war. Between the seizures and chronic pain, it was a wonder that she was holding together so well. She was a trooper, he thought.

“You don’t know that,” Aliya said, swiping at her face. “We’re almost out of money, and your job doesn’t pay enough. And we both know I won’t survive out on the streets.”

“Aliya, Aliya, _listen to me._ It is _never_ going to get that bad, understand?” Sujan said, desperate for her to believe him. “I will _never_ let you go without a roof over your head and food on the table. It’s my job to keep you safe, remember? Just like bābā said.”

“You shouldn’t have to. You should be out working a job that you like!”

“I am!” Sujan replied with a smile.

Aliya rolled her eyes. At least she wasn’t crying anymore.

Sujan pulled a packet of travel tissues out of his pocket and handed one to her. She blew her nose and balled the tissue up in her fist. Sujan took it from her and carried it to the trash can by the door, dropping it in and squirting hand sanitizer into his hand from the wall dispenser before he returned to his sister’s side.

“When are you going home?”

“When you don’t want me around anymore, or when the nurse kicks me out,” Sujan replied, looking over as the nurse walked in with a cup of water in her hand.

She gave it to Aliya, then looked over at Sujan and said, “visiting hours run until eight tonight, so you can stay until then unless something changes with her condition.”

Sujan nodded, thanking her. He already knew that, since this was far from his first rodeo. But it was still nice of the nurse to tell him anyways, he thought.

“You should go. You look tired. Go home and sleep,” Aliya said.

He looked over at her. “I’m fine.”

“You haven’t been getting enough rest with me being sick, and you have work tomorrow after you pick me up, Suj. You need sleep. Go home,” Aliya’s voice was firm when she spoke this time.

Sujan looked to the nurse for help, but she just shook her head and smiled as she headed back out into the hallway. He sighed. “Okay,” he said, picking his backpack up off the floor. He unzipped it and pulled out a book, phone, and tablet, and handed them to his sister. “I got your phone, and you can borrow my tablet. And I hope I grabbed the right book.”

“You did,” Aliya said, looking down at the cover of it, then back up at him with a smile. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Sujan nodded and stood, zipping up his backpack and shouldering it. “I love you,” he said, heading for the door.

“I love you too,” he heard Aliya say as he stepped out into the hallway.

Sujan made his way to the elevator, thanking Aliya’s nurse when he passed her in the hall. He let out a long sigh when he pushed the down button for the elevator, watching the display above the doors as it told him where the lift was. When the doors opened, he stepped in, and pushed the button for the ground floor. Then, as the elevator started its descent, he lost himself staring at the overhead display.

“Long day?”

Sujan looked over at his companion in the elevator, and older man with greying hair. “You could say that,” he replied.

The man smiled sympathetically. “Sorry to hear it. I just finished visiting my son, so I can relate.”

The elevator began to slow, and Sujan looked back towards the buttons.

“If it helps, something my wife always used to say that life was like a bow, and you were the arrow. And when it pulls you back, it’s because it’s about to shoot you forward into something better.” The older man looked over at Sujan meaningfully right as the elevator stopped and the doors slid open.

“Well then I hope that’s true for both of us,” Sujan said as the man stepped out of the elevator.

He looked back with a smile. “So do I. You take care now!”

Sujan nodded, stepping out of the elevator and watching for a moment as the man walked out of the front doors of the hospital. Then he sighed, and followed his footsteps, heading for the parking lot.

The drive back home was uneventful. Sujan found himself stuck in standstill traffic, halfway to his exit, and wound up staring out the window up at the clouds. It looked like it could rain. Maybe. They sure needed it.

When he finally got home, the sun had started to set behind the city, orange light glistening off of their windows. He could see them from the hill his apartment was situated on. He parked his car out front and grabbed his backpack, then headed inside, climbing up the five flights of stairs to reach his and Aliya’s home. He unlocked the door, smiling when his cat greeted him with a meow.

“Hi Truffles. Yes, I know. You’re hungry,” Sujan cooed, crouching down and petting the cat between the ears. He stood and set his backpack on one of the bar stools, then went to the pantry and pulled out a bag of cat food. Scooping a small cup of it out, he walked over and placed it in Truffles’ bowl, who immediately chowed down. Sujan placed the cup back into the bag of cat food and rolled the top up, then tucked it back into the pantry.

He washed his hands and grabbed a cup out of a cabinet and filled it with water before he turned the sink off. He gulped it down before sticking it in the dishwasher, then grabbed his backpack and headed to his room. Leaning against the doorframe for support, he kicked his shoes off, then picked them up and dropped them at the foot of his desk with his backpack. With a sigh, he tossed himself onto his bed, face-down. Aliya had been right. He _was_ tired. He turned his head and stared out the window, scratching his beard. For a moment, he thought about just passing out right then, but then his stomach rumbled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten yet.

“Come on, body. You can do it,” he groaned as he forced himself to sit up. He dragged himself off his bed, walking over and wiggling the mouse of his laptop to wake it up, frowning when he saw that it hadn’t charged, and groaning when he realized that it wasn’t even plugged in. He wrestled with pulling the cord out from behind his desk for a moment, then carried it and his laptop into the kitchen, plugging it in on the counter as he searched the fridge for food. He wound up grabbing a frozen dinner with a defeated sigh, sticking it on a plate and popping it into the microwave.

When it finished, he grabbed a fork out of a drawer and dug in. Even though he was hungry, it still wasn’t great. He really missed home-cooked meals. But this was so much cheaper, and with the kind of money they had right now, it was the best option. He finished off the meal and stuck his plate and fork in the dishwasher, then walked over and plopped down in his favorite, beaten up sofa, in front of the TV. He hit the remote, and flipped through the channels, stopping when he saw his and Aliya’s favorite show. He watched it for a few minutes before he realized that it was a new episode, then guiltily changed the channel. They’d watch the rerun of it together when she was out of the hospital.

He flipped through a few more channels, petting Truffles absently when she hopped onto his lap, finally stopping on some sort of Discovery Channel special about alligators. It was just interesting enough to take his mind off of the day. Sujan listened as the narrator described the animal’s hunting techniques, and when a clip played of a gator snapping at the camera, he looked down at Truffles and said, “that thing could eat you _alive.”_

Truffles meowed at him in response and kneaded his thigh. Sujan pet her, earning a bout of loud purring, and looked up when the show cut to commercial break.

_“Are you tired of working long hours for minimum wage and no benefits?”_

“Boy, let me _tell_ you,” Sujan sighed, looking down at Truffles with a smile when she rubbed her cheek against his hand.

_“Are you afraid of you and your family winding up on the streets?”_

Truffles let out a yawn that showed off her teeth. Sujan grinned, thinking about the alligators.

_“Are you worried about the inheritance money your grandparents left you running out before your sister feels better?”_

Wait. What? Sujan froze and slowly looked up at the TV. The picture had changed from that of some sort of infomercial to a dark blue with a hexagonal pattern across it. He stared at the screen, waiting for the announcer to say something else, and nearly jumped a foot in the air when he felt his phone vibrate in his back pocket. He pulled it out and stared at the words “Restricted Number”, finger hesitating over the “ignore” option.

_“Then pick up your phone and call today! And we’ll help you turn your life around!”_

Sujan stared at the TV when the announcer spoke again, his heart racing. This wasn’t normal. This was absolutely nowhere _near_ the realm of normal. What the _fuck_ was going _on?!_ The phone hadn’t stopped ringing, despite it having done so for well over the typical length..

_“Pick up your phone and call today! Call today! Call today!”_

Sujan swallowed hard, looked over at Truffles, who was staring at him with big yellow eyes, then picked up the call. “Hello?” he asked shakily, eyes drifting towards the drawer in the kitchen where he kept his gun.

 _“Well hey there! I was beginning to think that you weren’t going to pick up!”_ a cheerful, feminine-sounding voice exclaimed.

“Who is this?”

_“The person who’s about to launch you forward into something good!”_

Sujan’s thoughts immediately went back to the man in the elevator from earlier. Their interaction hadn’t _seemed_ strange, but after what the woman on the other end of the phone just said… “That man, in the elevator, do you work for him? Who is he?” he demanded.

_“No, he doesn’t have anything to do with me. I was just listening to you guys’ conversation. Which I’ll admit was a bit rude, but close observation is necessary for the discovery of an opportune moment for communication.”_

“Who. Are. You?” Sujan gritted out.

 _“Wow. Touchy. Wouldn’t have expected that from someone who looks like a literal teddy bear,”_ the voice remarked. _“The name’s Marz. I’m an AI belonging to the U.N.S.C. And I’m also the person here to tell you that I can get you out of the messy situation that you and your sister are currently in.”_

Sujan sucked in a deep breath. “What does the U.N.S.C. want with us?” It was never anything good.

_“Nothing. At least not directly. The reason I’ve reached out to you is because you have a set of skills that will be useful to us.”_

“Set of skills? A-and useful for what? What are you trying to get me to do?” Sujan demanded, then looked up when the display on the TV screen changed. Suddenly he was staring at an interface with a row of icons against the right side of the screen. Like he was looking at a computer. A window pulled up, and suddenly he found himself staring at a picture of himself back when he was still on active service. There was a bunch of information about him underneath it. He was startled to see that it was all right. “What is this?” he breathed, eyes huge.

 _“A part of your file. I have access to the U.N.S.C. database, and through it, I was able to select a number of candidates matching up to the parameters that my boss set for me. You fit everything almost perfectly, which is why I’m talking to you now,”_ Marz explained.

“But what are they for? What do you need them _for?”_ Sujan asked.

_“Are you familiar with the current investigation of the chairman of Charon Industries?”_

Oh. That shit. Sujan watched as the window containing his file disappeared and was replaced with a series of documents and images and videos. He watched them all flash across the screen. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen some of them. After the broadcast, they’d been everywhere. “You could say that,” he said absently.

 _“Our job is to sabotage any potential connections he has that would allow him to get off with a lighter sentence than he deserves. This means, we would be utilizing your skills to help us expose his support system, AKA all of his friends, for corruption, and convince whatever U.N.S.C. officials he has in his pocket to turn on him,”_ Marz replied.

Sujan took a deep breath. “Okay, so...you’re asking me to...basically help you take down a bunch of people with a _lot_ of power. You know I have a sister. What about her? I can’t leave her alone. She has seizures, and I can’t afford a caretaker! And what if they get to her?” he asked, worry creeping into his voice.

 _“That’s one of the perks of this job. My boss, who goes by Fox, and is actually a pretty swell lady, knows that you have family. So, if you accept, she’ll put your sister on a list in my system that will allow her to be taken somewhere safe if something happens to you. Not only that, but a caretaker will be provided for you. And the best part is, you won’t have to worry about medical costs anymore either, because your starting pay is fifty grand!”_ Marz rattled off in a singsong voice.

For a moment, Sujan forgot to breathe. “Fifty. Grand,” he said flatly.

_“Yeahuh.”_

“Fifty _thousand_ credits.”

_“That is what I said, yes. Oh, and it’s weekly, by the way.”_

_Weekly?!_ Sujan sat back and ran a hand through his hair. That kind of money would change _everything_. He could get him and his sister out of this dump of an apartment, pay for her medical costs, get a new car, pay for his hormones, get Truffles a scratching post and some new toys. He stared up at the ceiling fan, mind reeling. It was an offer too good to be true. “What’s the catch?” he asked.

_“There is no catch. You help us. We pay you.”_

“And you kill me when I want out?”

 _“Gosh, no! If you want out, you just tell us you want out, and we’ll write your final paycheck and send you home. No strings attached. Like I said, you’re helping_ **_us._ ** _”_

Sujan narrowed his eyes. “What kind of work would I be doing?”

_“Recon, probably a few raids, beating up bodyguards, hacking computer networks, blowing one bad guy’s stuff up and blaming it on another bad guy….that sort of stuff.”_

Sujan leaned forward again, glancing over when Truffles hopped off his lap and onto the floor. “So it’s dangerous.”

_“Not as bad as what you went through during the war. But yes, it’s dangerous.”_

“If something happens to me, what will happen to my sister? Pension isn’t enough to cover her medical costs.”

_“We’ll take care of her. For life. As a way of saying thanks. But hopefully we’ll never have to do that.”_

Sujan stared out the window, noticing it had gotten dark. It sounded...good. But he didn’t know enough about this “Fox” character. He needed to be _sure_ that he would be making the right choice if he said yes. “Tell me about your boss.”

 _“She’s worth a few billion credits. Served in New Mombasa during the Great War. Is best friends with me, and as a result, has access to my database. She’s also probably one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. And I’m not just saying that because we’re friends,”_ Marz replied.

So Fox had a lot of money. That explained the pay. And it was a little reassuring, in an odd way, knowing that she had probably seen the same things he had. “And what about the other candidates?” She had mentioned there being others, but hadn’t said anything about them since then.

Three windows containing profiles popped up on the TV screen. Daniel Grace, Samuel Ortez, and Mason Wu, Sujan read. By the looks of it, Ortez and Wu were both soldiers too. Grace, on the other hand, had a background as a police officer. Strange, considering that Grace didn’t quite fit in with him and the other two as far as skills. What was stranger was the fact that he was easily a decade younger than everyone else. Sujan frowned, but didn’t question it, wondering if maybe the kid had a different role than the rest of them.

_“Ortez and Wu, or Locus and Siris, as they go by on missions, will be your teammates in the field. Grace is the team’s driver, and Fox is it’s leader.”_

“Where’s her profile?” Sujan asked.

 _“I haven’t put one together for her yet. Mostly because it’s just safer that way. You’ll be meeting her though, so don’t worry. It’s just better to have minimal records of her,”_ Marz said, sounding like she was thinking. _“Tell you what, I’ll put together a profile. It’ll be kind of vague, but it’s the best I can do. I’ll stick it on your computer with everything else.”_

“Wait, what? What else?” Sujan asked.

_“Well, everything that you’re looking at, for starters. It’ll be an executable file with a random string of numbers and letters for a name. I’ll put it on your desktop.”_

“Oh-kay,” Sujan said, glancing at his laptop. “So what now?”

_“Now you decide if you want in or not.”_

Sujan stared at the floor, tapping the fingers of his free hand against his knee. They needed the money. And with the condition his sister was in, a caretaker would benefit them both. He closed his eyes, let out a long sigh, and opened them again. “Okay, I’m in.”

_“Beautiful. I’m going to stick a date, time, and address up on your TV. Hang up, take a picture. Don’t be late, and have a codename ready for us to call you by. Toodles!”_

The call ended, and Sujan looked up at the screen of his TV. He quickly took a picture of it with his phone, then watched as a minute later, the screen cut back to the final segment of the alligator special. Sujan sank into the sofa for a moment, staring at the picture he had just taken, then turned the TV of and stood up, heading to the kitchen to get his laptop. He had some reading to do.

 

* * *

 

“Well that was successful!” Fox announced as she hopped into the driver’s seat of her car.

Locus stowed all of their bags in the trunk before getting in on the passenger’s side. He had to agree with her, but he was also glad it was over. His social battery was in the red zone.

“Hey, do you like spicy food?” Fox asked suddenly as she backed out of their spot in the parking garage.

“I grew up in Mexico.”

Fox laughed. “I _know!_ But I had to ask, because _some_ people don’t can’t handle it,” she replied, shifting the gear into drive and steering them down the ramp towards the exit.

“Why?” Locus asked.

“Because I was gonna make my mom’s famous gumbo tonight.”

“In the middle of summer? _”_

Fox gave him an amused look. “There’s no such thing as ‘seasonal cooking’. You can eat whatever you want, whenever you want. And if someone gives you shit for it, punch them. By the way, you’re not allergic to shellfish, are you?”

“No.”

“Good, because there’s shrimp in there,” Fox explained, pulling out of the parking garage and onto the main road. “Hey could you do me a solid and find the nearest grocery store?” she asked as they stopped at a red light.

Locus pulled out his phone and ran a search, finding the directions to one a few blocks over. He sent it to his GPS, and hit start.

 _“Turn right in a quarter mile,”_ the nav’s voice said.

But Locus wasn’t listening, and had looked over when he heard Fox suck a breath through her teeth. He blinked when he saw that the color had drained from her face. “What’s wrong?”

She forced a smile onto her face. “I forgot to tell you to turn the voice off,” she said, her voice shaking a little.

Without hesitation, Locus quickly muted his phone, then looked back at her. “Do you want me to drive?” he asked when he saw the white-knuckled grip she had on the steering wheel.

“No, no, I got it. I just…” she swallowed hard and forced out a laugh. “I wasn’t expecting that, is all.” The light turned green, and she pulled forward.

“You need to turn--”

“I heard,” Fox said quickly.

Locus watched her carefully. This wasn’t the first time he had seen that look on someone’s face. It occurred to him that the voice from the GPS sounded an awful lot like CORA’s, and he suddenly felt horrible. “Sorry,” he said.

Fox didn’t say anything, pulling around the corner, eyes ahead. They stopped at another red light, and she let out a long sigh. “You didn’t know,” she said finally, looking over at him. Some of the color had returned to her face, but she still had that haunted look in her eye.

“Is it all automated voices?” he asked carefully. He knew this was a touchy subject, but the best way to prevent something like this from happening again was to know the extent of what caused it.

“I don’t know,” Fox admitted. “I think it’s just when I don’t expect them. Because I knew Marz was going to be in my apartment. But that…” She looked away. “This one’s new to me. Loud noises, yelling, sudden bright lights, I’ve had time to figure out how to deal with all of those. But this one...I guess I didn’t really know it would affect me like this.” The light changed to green and they started down the road again.

“You’re taking the next left,” Locus told her quietly.

She nodded. “I just need time, I guess,” she said after a moment. “That’s what it took for all the other ones. This isn’t my first rodeo. I survived all the other ones, and I’ll do the same with this one.”

Locus wished he could have that same outlook. And he wished he could say something that would make her feel better. But truth was, he didn’t know her well enough yet to come up with anything. “The store’s on your right in five hundred feet,” he said instead.

Fox nodded. “Oh, nice,” she said, spotting a parking spot out front. She parallel parked, then looked over and said, “you can stay in here if you want. I’ll just be a second.” Then she hopped out of the car before he could answer and headed into the store.

Locus watched her, and when she was finally out of view, he let out a long sigh and leaned back, staring at the car ceiling. If he had known that today would be nothing but a chain of mistakes, he would have stayed in bed. Fox, while talkative and pushy and sometimes quite annoying, deserved better. And while her ability to brush off negativity and literal _trauma_ was admirable, Locus couldn’t help but feel a stab of concern for her. And that just made everything so much worse. Sure, she was his partner. And sure, he was supposed to have her back. But he wasn’t ready to place that much trust in her, especially after all of the recent changes they’d faced. And it was _infuriating._ He should be over it by now. He should be over _Felix_ by now. He was dead, and he couldn’t hurt anyone anymore, and Fox was nothing like him. But it still hurt. And Locus hated it.

He let out another sigh and rubbed at his eyes, watching traffic pass by on the left for a while, looking over when he heard the trunk get popped, then closed a minute later, and Fox hopped back in on the driver’s side.

“Well, that was fast. Now to head home!” she announced.

Locus looked at her tiredly, realizing that she appeared much calmer than she had when she’d first entered the store. “Do you know the way back?” he asked.

She looked over at him, and there was concern on her face. “Yeah,” she said. “Jeeze, you sound terrible. You okay?”

He blinked. “I’m fine.”

Fox raised an eyebrow at him and gave him a cynical half-smile. “Liar.”

And for a moment Locus got ready to argue, but then she didn’t pursue it, and he relaxed a little, looking out the window. Fox didn’t say anything else, and he welcomed the silence, watching the city drift by.

“I’m not mad, you know.”

Locus looked over when Fox suddenly spoke up.

“This is a tough situation for both of us. We’re both dealing with our own shit, and trying to adjust to being back home at the same time. It’s not going to be smooth sailing all the way,” she said, not looking at him.

And he knew that. But it didn’t change how frustrating it all was. He realized he had nothing of substance to say in return, so he looked away and asked, “did you find everything?”

“Pardon?” Fox asked, glancing over at him.

“At the store.”

“Oh, yeah.”

And out of the corner of his eye, Locus saw a small smile appear on Fox’s face.

“You know, something Sanchez always used to say when I was little; ‘a good meal soothes the heart and eases the mind.’ Once we get some food in us, I’m sure we’ll feel better.”

Locus doubted that, but said nothing, watching as they pulled into the parking garage under the apartment.

Fox parked, and they both hopped out, and Locus met her around back by the trunk, where she stood with her hands on her hips and a look on her face like she was thinking hard. When he got to her side, he saw why. That was a lot of bags.

Fox looked over at him and grinned. “Well, you know what they say; two trips are for people who don’t try hard enough!” Then she turned and started unloading the trunk.

Locus just sighed and did the same. He couldn’t wait for today to be over.

 

* * *

 

“Hey, Tyler! Hurry it up, man! I’m going to miss my date!”

Tyler let out a sigh and finished cleaning off the last of the knives, setting it on the rack to dry with the others. He turned off the sink and wiped his hands off on his apron, walking over and hanging it up on the row of hooks by the door. “Give me a sec, Bobby. Gotta clock out.”

It wasn’t the worst job; being a butcher at a little ma and pa shop nestled between a law firm and a flower shop in inner city Boston. Sure, dealing with animal guts day in and day out wasn’t the _greatest,_ but it paid above minimum wage, and the owners didn’t care if you put together a sandwich with the cooked meats up front for lunch, and it was way better than the job he’d had while working in New York City. But it was mechanical. He could do it in his sleep. It _bored_ him. But he didn’t have anywhere else to go.

Tyler let out another sigh as he clocked out and headed towards the front of the store where Bobby was waiting impatiently for him.

“Jesus, took you long enough,” Bobby complained as he locked up the deli once Tyler was out on the sidewalk.

Tyler ignored him and pulled his keys out of his pocket and rounded the corner into the alleyway between the law firm and the store beside it, stepping into the parking lot used by the deli employees and the other two stores beside it. Bobby caught up to him just as he reached his car.

“Man, you should _see_ this girl. Blonde. Great tits. Legs for fuckin miles, man,” Bobby said, getting in on the passenger’s side when Tyler unlocked the car.

“Sounds amazing,” Tyler said unenthusiastically, getting in and starting the car.

“I got this new cologne too, and my roommate had a bunch of lady friends over, and he told me they all liked it, so I’m _totally_ getting laid tonight.”

“Wow, it’s that powerful, huh?” Tyler asked flatly, pulling out of the parking lot.

“Listen, chicks dig a guy who smells fresh, you know?”

“As opposed to one smelling like Axe body spray and swiss cheese,” Tyler said, looking at Bobby pointedly.

“Dude, I’m gonna _shower_ first.”

“Now that you’ve got this ‘fresh’ new cologne, maybe you can invest in getting your car fixed?” Tyler suggested, looking out the window to his left as he merged onto the highway.

“Dude, you _know_ I ain’t got that kind of money!”

“Girls like a guy with a form of transportation. So maybe you should stop wasting money on useless stuff to help you get laid, and save up.”

“Okay, but first of all, sex is amazing; second of all, I’m borrowing my roommate’s car, so I _have_ a form of transportation.”

“If you say so,” Tyler said, pulling off an exit and navigating towards Bobby’s apartment. He’d been making this same trip nightly for two weeks now. It was getting old. He turned onto a street lined with apartments, and stopped in front of the one Bobby lived in.

Bobby hopped out and pointed finger guns at him, saying, “wish me luck, bro!” Then turned and headed into his building.

Tyler just shook his head and drove away. When he got back onto the highway, he decided he was sick of listening to the sounds of traffic and punched the power button for his radio, switching through the channels until he found something familiar. It was a song one of his teammates used to blast during workouts while he was still on active service during the Great War. A smile creeping onto his face, he loudly sang along all the way to his exit.

When he got home, most of those good vibes had faded away into exhaustion. Tyler sloppily unlocked his apartment door, tossed his keys onto the kitchen counter, and threw himself onto the beaten up couch pushed against the wall. He lay there for a moment before he finally managed to bully himself into taking off his shoes. He dropped them over the arm of the couch by the front door, then lay back and stared at the ceiling, listening to the sound of some idiots shouting outside.

With a sigh, he forced himself to sit up, and opened the laptop he had left on the coffee table in front of him that morning. While it loaded, he stood and grabbed two slices of leftover pizza and a beer out of the fridge across the room. He dropped the pizza onto a plate and stuck it in the microwave, popping the beer open while he waited for it to heat up. When the pizza finished, he grabbed a paper towel from next to the sink for a napkin and carried his dinner back over to the coffee table. He took a bite of his pizza while he typed in his password one-handed, going to wash it down with a sip of beer when something on his desktop made him stop.

 _What the-_ There was an executable file that he didn’t remember installing just _sitting_ there. Tyler set his beer down and hunched over his laptop, pulling up a web browser and typing the name of the file into the search bar. Nothing. It wasn’t a part of some new update, nor was there any information suggesting it was a virus.

Frowning, Tyler minimized the window and highlighted the file, hitting the delete key on his keyboard. He then right-clicked the recycle bin icon, and selected the ‘empty recycle bin’ option, hitting ‘yes’ when a window popped up to ask him if he was sure. The icon changed to show that the recycling bin was now empty, and Tyler sat back with a little sigh of relief and took another bite of his pizza. The sudden sound of a car alarm going off outside drew his attention towards the window for a moment, and when he looked back at his laptop, he nearly dropped his plate.

The file was _back._

He set his plate down next to his beer on the coffee table, and leaned forward and stared at the file. Hard. He had gotten enough sleep the night before. There was no _way_ he was seeing things. Eyes narrowed in concentration, he repeated the same steps he took before. This time, he kept his eyes locked on it, even when he reached for his beer. He took a sip of it, still staring at his screen. Finally, his vision started to blur, and he squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them again, he almost spat out his drink.

What.

The.

_Fuck._

__

Tyler forced himself to swallow, coughing a few times, then deleted the file again. This time, as he was looking, it reappeared on his desktop. He stared at it, mouth slightly agape. This couldn’t be real, he thought. This had to be a dream, right? Computers didn’t do this sort of shit! He reasoned that he had probably just crashed the minute he had gotten home, and was having a very, very vivid dream. Probably fuelled by hunger. Or something. Just to make sure, he pulled the hair tie on his wrist up and then snapped it hard against his skin. It hurt, but he didn’t wake up. When he looked back at the screen, he froze, his fight or flight instincts going absolutely wild. Because a command window had opened up. And in it were the words: [ _This isn’t a dream.]_

“Um…” Tyler said slowly after a long, startled silence. “Is this the F.B.I.? Because if it is, you’ve got the wrong guy. The dude _above_ me is the drug dealer. You’ve got the wrong floor.”

_[This isn’t the F.B.I. either. You’re not in trouble. Click the .exe file.]_

“Okay, so, no offense, but I’ve seen like, a _lot_ of movies where the protagonist listens to some weird person they’ve never met before and wind up balls-deep in shit. So like, pass, buddy.”

_[It’s like you said, you share an apartment complex with a drug dealer. These past three months there have been two hit-and-runs on the street adjacent to yours, and nearly a dozen drug-related arrests.]_

“And you’re going to offer me the Holy Grail, or some shit, right?”

_[I’m offering you a job. Don’t you want to get out of here?]_

“The neighborhood isn’t _that_ bad--” Tyler cut off when he heard what was probably a series of gunshots coming from a few streets over.

_[You were saying?]_

“Look, I’m making ends meet. That’s all that matters. I don’t need some no-face telling me that they’ve got a better job- that _probably_ involves black market or gang shit or whatever -and acting like they know what I want,” Tyler snapped.

_[No “gang shit”. What you’ll be doing will all be explained in the .exe file.]_

“Which is probably a virus.”

_[It’s not. The other guy didn’t believe me either. But eventually he clicked on it too.]_

“What _other guy?_ What is this _for?_ ”

_[Are you aware of the crimes of the Charon Industries chairman, Malcolm Hargrove?]_

“I--” Tyler stopped. He’d _seen_ that broadcast. _Everyone_ had. Was _that_ what this was about? “What does that have to do with anything?”

_[That will be explained in the .exe file. But I have a question for you; aren’t you wondering why the U.N.S.C. officials who put you on that colony planet that was glassed are getting paid so much, when your pension is barely putting food on the table?]_

Tyler swallowed past the feeling of unease in his chest. Whoever this was, they had a point. His pension, like that of so many other soldiers he had spoken to, just wasn’t enough. It _wasn’t_ fair. But it also wasn’t an answer. His eyes slid over to the executable file on his desktop. “This isn’t going to like, send my bank password to some jerk-off in like...Taiwan, is it?”

_[No. I already have that. But don’t worry, I’m just a computer. I don’t need the money.]_

“Yeah that doesn’t make me feel any better,” Tyler snapped, staring at the file. He sucked in a deep breath, then hissed out “fuck it,” and clicked on it.

For a moment, his computer did nothing. But then it’s fan started whirring and his screen cut to black, and then suddenly there was a foreign interface on his computer. He moved his mouse to click on one of the icons, but stopped when he noticed that he didn’t have a cursor on his screen. He played with his keyboard, but still nothing.

“Um, hello? I think you broke my computer.” Tyler tapped the side of his laptop, jumping when a feminine voice suddenly came out of his speakers.

_“No, no, I just disconnected your ability to access any of what’s on here. Think of it as a sort of teaser for what you’ll be able to see if you decide to work with us.”_

Tyler stared at his computer. “Are...you the same person I was just talking to?”

_“Yes. But I’m not a person in the sense that you might think. I wasn’t just being cheeky when I said that I was a computer a few seconds ago. I’m an AI. You can call me Marz.”_

Tyler let out a slow breath. “Okay, for which government...uh...branch?”

 _“Technically, I belong to the U.N.S.C., ONI, to be specific, but I don’t answer to them. I’m currently under orders from an old friend of mine to get in contact with you,”_ Marz replied.

“Who?”

 _“She goes by Fox.”_ Tyler watched as a window appeared on the screen. At the top left corner, there was a box where he assumed someone’s photo was supposed to be, but it was blank. The information below it wasn’t all that helpful either. _“She’s currently in charge of an operation to destabilize the support system for the chairman of Charon Industries.”_ The window disappeared and was replaced with a new one. This time, he recognized who was on it. It was _him._ _“Your profile matched the parameters she set for me. You have a valuable skill set that could help with destabilization efforts.”_

“Okay, so does literally every other soldier. What makes me so fucking special?”

_“Drive. Experience. Not everyone has survived a colony planet being destroyed. You have the ability to operate in high-stress situations. Information gathered from your time as a soldier proves that. You kept a level head and were able to lead your team to safety even after your commanding officer had been killed, and the city you were in was being glassed. Very few people can boast the same.”_

Tyler closed his eyes and looked away. That memory still hurt. “I’m not a hero,” he said quietly, opening his eyes and staring in the direction of his kitchen, at nothing in particular.

_“I know. You’re just a person. But you still deserve better than this, regardless.”_

Tyler looked back towards the computer. He was silent; deep in thought for a while, listening to the clock in the kitchen tick away. “I want to know more about this job. What am I doing, and who are the others that I’m working with?”

A series of windows containing profiles were pulled up on his screen, and his cursor suddenly returned. He clicked through them, eyes scanning over the information about each person. Most of them were typical run-of-the-mill ex-soldiers. The only one that stood out was the young, skinny, kid named Daniel Grace. “What’s with Grace?”

_“He’s your driver.”_

“He’s a _baby.”_

_“He was also about to jump off of a bridge into traffic when Fox stopped him and offered him a job.”_

So this “Fox” was either really good at finding people at the right place and the right time, or she had a bleeding heart. Tyler doubted it was the latter. He looked at all of the other profiles again, wondering exactly what had caused them to agree to whatever this job was. “So you gonna tell me what I’m gonna be doing? Or do I have to guess?”

 _“Like I said before, Fox is leading destabilization efforts against the chairman. With the investigation and imminent trial, he’s going to want to be surrounded by his friends. Since the trial will be taking place in New York City, much of his support will be centralized nearby. Because of the broadcast sent out by the Epsilon AI, Hargrove is working to remove any evidence that could incriminate him. Furthermore, he also has a number of friends in high-ranking positions within the U.N.S.C. Our job is to make sure that they do_ **_their_ ** _jobs right, and don’t help out their pal, Hargrove. We are also going to eliminate as much of his support system as possible by exposing the crimes of his friends. And trust me, there are a_ **_great_ ** _many,”_ Marz explained.

“And is this...legal? And...I mean, you _belong_ to the U.N.S.C., but it sounds like you’re going to be working against them.” It didn’t quite add up. And it made Tyler very, very anxious.

 _“We’re not going to be_ **_hurting_ ** _anyone in the U.N.S.C. In fact, technically this operation was approved by them.”_

“Then what are you going to do to make sure they don’t side with Hargrove?”

_“So, you know how in school, one of the administrators would come in and stand by the door of the classroom and observe your teacher while they taught? This is like that. But instead of firing them, we have the ability to make sure they go to prison for life.”_

Okay, so it wasn’t like they were going to be physically threatening them. That was...good. But Tyler still wasn’t sold. All of this was completely out of nowhere, and he wasn’t sure _why_ anyone would think he’d want a part in this in the _first_ place. “Okay, so what’s in it for me? What makes you think I’d want anything to do with this?”

_“Because you’re a good person. Your service record does enough to tell me that. But outside of that, you volunteer at the local animal shelter, you always drop your spare change into that homeless man’s cup on your way to the grocery store, you volunteer at soup kitchens, etcetera, etcetera.”_

“Yeah, okay, but that still doesn’t--”

_“A lot of people have been screwed over by Charon Industries. Did you know that they started a civil war on the colony planet Chorus to kill off its population, just so they could benefit financially off of the alien technology there?”_

“Well, yes, but--”

 _“And don’t you want to get out of this awful apartment, in this awful neighborhood, and get off of your butt and_ **_do_ ** _something? Soup kitchens and animal shelters are all good, but they’re nothing compared to what you_ **_could_ ** _do to help the thousands and thousands of people being hurt by Hargrove and his friends. People will keep suffering if you don’t kill the problem at its roots. You have a chance to do some_ **_real_ ** _good.”_

Tyler looked away. He hated it, but Marz was right. He loved helping out his community. He knew most of the people on his street. And he knew the shit they had to go through to make ends meet because so many of them had either served in or lost someone to the war and just weren’t getting enough money from their pensions. Meanwhile all of the big businessmen who’d built technology and weapons had profited, and still _were_ profiting off of the war. And if Hargrove had something to do with that, then shouldn’t _something_ be done about it?

_“Also, your starting pay is fifty grand. If that helps any.”_

That _did_ help, actually. A lot. Tyler stared at the floor. It wasn’t like he had anything to lose. His family was gone. He looked back up at the laptop, and said. “Do you guys have like...an application process? Do I need to send in a resume?”

_“Nah, we already know pretty much everything about you.”_

Creepy, but unsurprising, considering that he was talking to an AI that had somehow hacked into his computer and also apparently knew his bank information.

_“Are you saying that you want in?”_

“I…” Tyler hesitated. “I want to know that I can back out of this whenever I want.”

_“Of course. If it ever gets too much for you, just let Fox know, and she’ll understand.”_

“And the same goes for everyone else involved?”

_“Yep.”_

“Okay…” Tyler sighed, picking up his beer. “I’m in.”

_“Perfect! Here’s the address you’re going to go to this Wednesday. Three P.M. Don’t be late. And have a codename ready to go.”_

Tyler looked at the address that had popped up in a new window. He pulled out his phone and took a photo of it, then knocked back the rest of his beer.

 _This_ was going to be fun.

 

* * *

 

Fox, it turned out, was a _remarkable_ chef. And while Locus knew he’d had his doubts about what she had said earlier, the food really _had_ helped his mood a little. He watched out of the corner of his eye as Fox scooped the leftovers into a tupperware and stuck them in the fridge. It was the one thing she had insisted on doing after he’d shooed her away from washing the pots and pans.

“Y’know, I didn’t realize how much I missed cooking until like, an hour ago,” Fox said, hopping up on one of the bar stools.

“Did you cook a lot before the war?” Locus asked, not looking back at her as he scrubbed one of the pots.

“Almost every day, yeah,” Fox replied. “My mom went to culinary school and used to work on yachts as a chef before she set up a bunch of restaurants across the city, so I’ve got a lot of recipes from her.”

Interesting. Clearly that skill had rubbed off on Fox. Locus finished the last pan and set it on the rack to dry, turning off the sink. He turned to face Fox, noticing that she had gotten her laptop in front of her. “Any news on the candidates?” he asked.

“It looks like...both Gonzalez and Florence accepted,” Fox said, eyes never leaving her screen.

Locus walked around to stand behind her, noting the green check marks that had appeared in the top corner of both candidate’s image. “And Siris is also getting involved,” he said, glancing at Fox out of the corner of his eye.

“I already gave him the rendezvous location and time, so he’ll be meeting at the warehouse with the others,” Fox replied, looking up at him.

 _“I also reached out to Sanchez. I figured you’d want him there too. I left a voicemail, but I haven’t heard back from him,”_ Marz spoke up.

“That’s fine. Thanks Marz,” Fox said. “He’s probably having dinner. He doesn’t answer his phone when he’s eating.”

“When are we meeting the others?” Locus asked.

“Wednesday. So we have tomorrow to get ready for them,” Fox replied, closing her laptop and reaching her arms back behind her in a stretch. She hopped off the bar stool and yawned. “In the meantime, let’s take it easy for tonight.” She looked back at Locus with a small grin on her face. “Wanna watch a movie ‘till Kimball calls?”

Well it wasn’t like there was anything else to do around here. So Locus sighed and said, “which one?”

 

* * *

 

Fox stood with her arms crossed, staring at the men before her. Flanking her were Locus and Siris, who had already been briefed on what they were going to cover today. It wasn’t like either of them were really new to any of it anyways. Sanchez was coming later, which was a bit of a disappointment, but it wasn’t anything she couldn’t handle. What really mattered was that all three candidates had arrived on time, which meant that they could get started.

Her eyes fell on Danny for a moment, who looked incredibly nervous. Hopefully that would change by the time she’d finished today. “I’d like to start by thanking all of you for arriving on time. That’s a habit I’d like all of you to keep up while we work together,” she began, eyes scanning over the three. She uncrossed her arms and stuck her thumbs in her pockets before continuing. “My name is Fox. One of you has already met me. The other two of you have only heard of me. I’m sure that whatever Marz told you made me sound a little more impressive than I actually am, but whatever.” She waved a hand dismissively. “So, as you know, we’re going to be running a U.N.S.C.-sanctioned operation to eliminate the chairman of Charon Industries’ supports and help bring him to justice. As you know, this won’t be an easy job, and it _will_ be dangerous. However, we already have a number of allies who will be aiding us in our operations. And as time goes on, that number will only increase. As of right now, everyone you see here makes up our complete field team. A friend of mine, named Sanchez, has helped us set up the operation so far and will continue to work behind the scenes. He’ll be stopping by a bit later. But for right now, I’ll show you where all the fun gadgets you get to play with are.” She turned and led them to the platform, hitting the button on the remote once they were all on, and allowing a small smile to creep onto her face at their reactions once it started moving.

“Did the U.N.S.C. build this?” Siris asked, looking over at her on their way down.

“No, but my family did. It served as a laboratory at one point when my father was still working on Marz,” Fox replied, noting how the others turned to look at her when she said that. She decided she’d elaborate on that later, nodding ahead of them instead to redirect their attention. “Now, sublevel one is where all of our supplies will be kept. Weapons, technology, medical supplies, and so on, are all located down here. Once we get everyone squared away, I will be giving each of you access to the warehouse. In the event that you decide this job isn’t for you, you will be required to return the key I give you to either myself or Sanchez.”

“What happens if we don’t?” Danny asked.

“Then we’re going to have a problem,” Fox replied with a slightly threatening grin. The platform came to a halt, and she led them off, walking into the center of the space and stopping, turning back to face the men behind her. “The most important thing to remember, regardless of whether or not you stay with us until the end of this operation, is that the sublevels of this warehouse don’t exist. I don’t mean to come off threatening, but understand that if any one of you reveals the location of this warehouse to _anyone_ , friends, family members, strangers at the bus stop, we _will_ cut our losses. We’re currently a small operation, and if we’re compromised, we won’t stand a chance against what our enemies will bring to the table.”

“I’m speaking purely in hypotheticals here, but if one of us _did_ let something slip to a family member, what would happen to them?” Sujan asked.

“That depends on what they know,” Fox replied, looking over at him and narrowing her eyes slightly. “We won’t hurt them, however.” Then she turned and gestured for them to follow her, leading them to the large holo-table on the other end of the space. She tapped it’s surface, bringing it online, then turned and leaned back against the edge of it, nodding for the others to sit. Tyler, Danny, Sujan, and Siris all did, but Locus hung back, standing with his arms crossed behind them. “Before we go any further, I’m going to briefly talk about Marz and myself,” Fox said, noting how everyone but Locus perked up at this. “First of all, nothing I tell you leaves this room under any circumstances, understand?” She waited until everyone had given her some sort of acknowledgment before she continued. “You all know Siris and Locus’ real names. They’re in the files that were sent to you by Marz. Only my code name was included, because of how high-profile I actually am. My real name is Pepper Matsukaze, daughter of the former Vice President of Emblem, and current heir to the position of company CEO. My father created Marz, who, as you know, is an AI owned by the U.N.S.C. She operates their entire database, which is what gave her access to all of you,” Fox explained. “Now here’s where things get confusing, so stay with me. I enlisted to the U.N.S.C. during the war under an alias. If you hear the name Annita Rosenblum thrown around, that’s what it is. The main reason for the alias was to protect Marz.” She shoved her hands in her pockets and shifted her weight before continuing. “Here comes the awkward part; after the war, I went on to work for Charon Industries.”

Fox paused for a moment, noting how the three who hadn’t heard this bit exchanged confused glances with each other. “Back then, I was naive. I had gone to school to study biomechanical engineering, and thought that through Charon, I could put my knowledge to good use. I wound up being stationed with nine other scientists on a moon orbiting Chorus. The same Chorus Hargrove attacked. We studied alien technology to incorporate into biotics with the help of an AI we called CORA. After a driver update, she became hostile and killed my teammates. Eventually, with the help of a group of soldiers who crash-landed on the moon, we were able to shut her down. Since then, Locus and I have been working with them to bring Hargrove to justice.” Fox ran through the information quickly, noting how Locus narrowed his eyes at her. She wondered if it was because he had noticed that she’d left out his involvement in Charon’s assault on Chorus. It wasn’t her story to tell, and if it was something he wanted to talk about, he could bring it up on his own. She gave him a small nod, then looked back at the others. “It’s a lot to take in, but know that I have a very good reason for wanting the chairman to pay for what he’s done. Any questions?”

There was an uncomfortable period of silence before anyone said anything. Tyler spoke first, asking, “so...unrelated, but do we have access to all of those weapons?” He jerked his thumb back over his shoulder towards the wall of guns.

Fox couldn’t help but smile. “Yes. Which brings me to a little something I like to call the ‘house rules’,” she replied. “There’s a set of rules that we’ll all be following, which I took the time yesterday to have posted throughout this area. The most important one is that everything we do will be run by the person who sent us here; General Kimball, who you’ll meet later: The other key ones to note are; no unnecessary killing, look out for one another, be honest with one another, never show your faces in a fight, and never use your real names when we’re on a mission. Which brings me to our next order of business; Marz told all of you to come prepared with code names,” Fox said, clapping her hands together and looking at Tyler, Sujan, and Danny. “If you haven’t thought one up yet, you’re more than welcome to bounce some ideas off of each other to find something that you like.”

“Can they be anything?” Sujan asked.

“Try to keep them short and simple. And no swear words, because I swear a lot, and if you name yourself ‘Motherfucker,’ you’re going to wind up thinking I’m calling your name every few minutes,” Fox replied, brightening a bit when most of the others chuckled at that. At least they appeared to be getting comfortable with each other now. “So toss some ideas back and forth. See what you can come up with. There’s a mini fridge by the guns over there with water and soda in it, so grab something if you want. Get comfy, make friends with each other. We’ve got some time to kill before Sanchez shows up. Once he does, I’ll introduce all of you to Kimball, we’ll show you the second sublevel, and then we’ll be finished. But you all need to leave with a code name once we’re done here. And if you don’t have one, then _I_ get to name you, and you won’t like what I come up with,” she warned with a smile.

Once she set them loose, Tyler asked if anyone wanted something from the mini fridge before beelining for it. When he came back, he tossed Siris a water bottle and cracked open a can of soda for himself. “So where’d you come up with ‘Locus’?” he asked.

Fox couldn’t help but crack a grin when Locus seemed a little startled to be spoken to. “It’s the name of my power armor,” she heard him reply.

“Ohhh, clever!” Tyler said with a nod, taking a sip of his soda.

“Where’d you serve?”

Fox looked over when Sujan addressed her. “New Mombasa,” she replied.

Sujan made an “ouch” face. “Yikes. I guess you were one of the lucky ones, huh?”

“You could say that,” Fox agreed with a nod. “What about you?”

“Reach.”

 _“Jesus,”_ Fox said, suddenly wishing she had read deeper into everyone’s files instead of letting Marz do most of the steering.

Sujan ran a hand through his hair, frowning slightly. “Yeah...it wasn’t a good time for anyone.”

“I know. I heard,” Fox replied.

“What about you, bud?” Sujan asked, turning to Siris.

“ _Station Wayward Rest,_ ” he replied, taking a sip of his water bottle. “And yes, that’s how I lost my leg.”

“Didn’t it get blown up?” Danny interjected, then looked immediately sheepish when the other three turned to him.

“Yes,” Siris said, “with six nukes.”

“And you didn’t die of radiation poisoning?” Danny asked incredulously.

“That’s what power armor’s for, kid,” Fox replied. “Shit protects from radiation, toxic air, pressure changes, all that stuff.”

“Wow,” Danny said, his eyes getting huge. “I mean, I knew it was high-tech stuff. But I didn’t think it could protect against a nuke. Let alone _six._ ”

“And that’s why the U.N.S.C.’s budget is so ridiculously high.”

Fox perked up and looked over when she heard Sanchez’s voice, and saw him standing next to Tyler and Locus with a grin on his face. “Sneaking up on people again?” she asked.

Sanchez laughed. “No, no! I know better than to sneak up on a group of trained killers!”

Fox grinned, then looked at the others. “Everyone, this is Sanchez. He’s the one who put this whole warehouse together.”

“Is that your code name?” Danny asked.

Sanchez chuckled. “No, I don’t get a code name. Mostly because I don’t need one. No one pays any mind to an old fella like me, and I won’t be out in the field with you.” He gave Danny a curious look. “But you, son, _you’ve_ gotta have one. So what is it?”

“Uhhhh.” Danny looked over at Fox for help.

She shrugged. “Just pick something you like. Like a name you’ve always wanted, or your favorite animal, or a town, color, object. Literally anything.”

“Rocket!” Danny exclaimed.

“What, like the racoon from _Guardians of the Galaxy?”_ Sanchez asked with a laugh.

“Oh..uh…” Danny looked back at him, and seemed almost embarrassed. “Like an actual...rocket. I-I just really like space stuff.”

Beside him, Siris’ face broke into a grin, and Sujan said, “hey, that’s cute, actually!”

Danny’s face turned red and he looked away.

“What about you?” Sanchez asked, looking at Tyler.

Tyler turned his gaze upwards in thought. “I’m thinking….’Jersey.’ Where I was born.”

“Nice,” Fox said, then looked over at Sujan.

“Can I be ‘Bear?’” he asked.

“Only if Rocket changes his name to ‘Twink’,” Fox replied with a snide grin.

Siris spat out his drink and Danny turned even redder than before.

Sujan threw his head back in a laugh that echoed through the whole space. “Oh my _god!_ _No!”_ He thought for a minute, then said, “ah...how about ‘Grizzly?’”

“ _Much_ better,” Fox replied, then looked around at everyone. “So from now on, these are the names you’re going to call each other by when we’re on missions. Just to get into the habit, I want you to only call each other by your code names for the rest of the time here, okay?”

“Sure thing, boss!” Jersey said, giving her a casual salute with his soda can.

Fox nodded, then said, “Marz, could you send a call through to General Kimball, please?”

_“Roger that.”_

Fox caught Sanchez’s grin when the others looked around to find the source of Marz’s voice. Then she turned towards the holo-projector when the call connected. “Hello, hello!”

“Hello, Commander Fox,” Kimball greeted, looking around at everyone’s faces. “I see you’ve gathered your team.”

“They’re all here,” Fox replied, then looked back and said, “why don’t you all introduce yourselves?”

Siris, Jersey, Rocket, and Grizzly all did, and Fox gave them a satisfied nod when they’d finished without using their real names. It was good to see that they were already taking to their code names.

“I’ve already briefed them on the operation and my connection to both Marz and Charon, but if you have anything else you’d like to add, feel free!” Fox said to Kimball.

“First of all, thank you all for coming aboard with us. You’ve all agreed to a risky job, but from what I’ve heard, you’re all more than capable of doing what needs to be done,” Kimball said. “As of right now, our situation on Chorus has improved immensely thanks to Fox and Locus’ efforts. The job you have now is to make sure that the chairman never has a chance to do to others what he did to us.”

“General Kimball and I will be discussing the missions that all of us will be executing in order to make sure we stay on the right track,” Fox explained, looking back at the group. “And everything that we do on a day-to-day basis will be reported back to her. I might be in charge of our operations here, but _she’s_ the one who _gives_ us those operations.”

“I will be maintaining contact with Commander Fox and Locus throughout their stay on Earth. Any questions or information that you have for me can be relayed my way through one of them,” Kimball said.

“In a few days, I’ll be calling all of you back here for our first mission together, and we’ll have a briefing with General Kimball,” Fox added.

“For right now, I want to thank all of you. What you’re doing is incredibly brave, and with your help, we’re going to do a lot of good,” Kimball continued. “As Commander Fox said, you will be updated with a new mission in the near future. So for now, gather information and learn how to work as a team. I will be seeing all of you sometime next week,” she said, then turned to Fox and said, “good luck, Commander. Kimball signing off.”

The transmission cut, and Fox turned back to her team. She noticed how Locus had melted into the shadows during the call with an amused grin. “So you’ve all met the scary boss-lady.  Now we can get to the fun part. Sanchez?” she asked, looking over at him.

“My pleasure. Follow me, everyone!” Sanchez said, and led them all back to the platform. “That reminds me, I’ve done a few updates on these cars since you last came down here. Sachs gave me a good idea, and I just had to roll with it,” Sanchez explained as they descended.

 _“Cars?”_ Rocket asked, eyes huge.

“Ah, yes, the driver gets to see all his fun new toys,” Sanchez said with a humored grin.

The platform came to a stop, and Fox watched with a small laugh as Rocket wandered down the aisle between the rows of cars with eyes the size of dinner plates. “You like them?” she called out.

He turned and gave her a wordless nod, an enchanted look on his face.

“So I’ll give you the quick rundown,” Sanchez said, walking past Rocket. “The SUV’s are armored, and the one on the end there has nitrous, which makes you go really fast. These three sports cars over here are also armored,” he said, gesturing to the cars in mention. “And everything that’s armored has bulletproof glass and retractable kneecappers. Marz also has access to all of them, and can communicate with you through voice commands. Keys, if you’ve been down here before, have been moved to the wall by the entrance, because it’s just easier to grab them and go. But all the spares are on hooks on the walls behind each car. It doesn’t matter which ones you grab, as long as you put them back where you found them.”

Sanchez led them down to the end of the aisle and stopped in front of Fox’s cars, glancing at her before continuing. “All of these cars belong to Fox. If you want to use one, ask her. But note that they lack any armor or bulletproof glass.”

“I’ll usually say yes if you want to borrow one,” Fox added. “But let’s be real here, you guys will be able to afford your own after a couple of paychecks.”

“Even the Lambo?” Rocket asked.

“Only if you don’t wreck it,” Fox replied.

“What about the Humvee?” Grizzly asked. “You can’t just take that out on civilian roads.”

Sanchez looked back in the direction of the vehicle in mention. “That’s for emergencies only. Hopefully you’ll never have to use it, since, like you said, it’s not really something you can take out for a joyride in the city. But it’s there if we need it.” He turned around to face the group. “Now for all the changes; I had a few of my pals come down and install GPS trackers in all of these cars. Reason being if you get in trouble, and you can’t call for help for some reason, and Marz _somehow_ loses contact with you, we’ll still be able to send backup to your location. It’s also helpful to have in case one of the bad guys decides to steal one of these cars. The fun part is that the trackers have been rigged so that if they’re removed, the car won’t start. Again, just in case the bad guys decide to try anything cute,” he explained. “Any questions?”

“Unrelated, but do we have a cool team name?” Jersey asked.

 _“The Florida Dolphins,”_ Marz replied, her voice echoing through the garage.

“Marz, _please,”_ Fox sighed.

“That’s in _terrible_ taste,” Siris remarked.

_“Fox said the same thing a few days ago.”_

“Just...Jersey, do _you_ have an idea?” Fox asked exasperatedly.

“Yes, but you might hate it, and if you do, that’s okay, but just tell me,” Jersey replied.

“Lay it to me,” Fox said, internally bracing herself.

“‘The Cleanup Crew,’” Jersey said, complete with jazz hands.

“The _what?_ ” Fox asked dubiously.

“Yeah, yeah, listen. Hargrove’s making a big mess, right? And we’re cleaning it up! So it works!” Jersey exclaimed, looking around for support.

“Dude, we’re going to be killing people. Do we really want to sound like a bunch of janitors?” Grizzly asked.

“I think it sounds kinda menacing,” Rocket said. “I mean, you can make anything sound intimidating if you add guns to it, honestly.”

“See?!” Jersey said. “The kid gets it!”

“Do we really _need_ a team name?” Siris asked.

_“Considering your boss ran a Google search for ideas on Monday morning, I’d think she’d want one.”_

Fox glared in the direction of the overhead speaker. “Thanks, Marz.”

_“No problem!”_

“Well, does anyone else have any ideas?” Jersey asked. “Sanchez? Locus? You two have been _awful_ quiet!”

“Don’t bring me into this,” Sanchez said with an amused smile and a dismissive wave. “I’m not even going to be out there with you.”

Locus just shook his head.

“How about ‘The Spectacular Seven?’” Jersey asked.

“We’re not a _circus,”_ Siris said flatly.

“What about--”

“--The Cleanup Crew is fine,” Fox said quickly before Jersey could come up with anything more ridiculous. “For _now,_ ” she added when Jersey looked her way with an excited look. “If we come up with something better, then we’ll change it.”

“Sweet!” Jersey exclaimed.

“Well, it’s past four,” Sanchez said suddenly, looking at his watch. “I need to get home to feed my cats. And I know most of us have other commitments, so why don’t we head back up.”

Fox caught his eye and gave him a grateful look as he walked past and led them all back towards the platform.

Once they were back at ground level, they all said their goodbyes, and Fox waited until they had all driven off before she finally let her composure slip. “Oh my _gooooood,_ ” she sighed, leaning forward and letting her arms dangle. “I hate first impressions,” she mumbled, then straightened back up, putting her hands on her hips. She glanced over at Locus, who was standing with his arms crossed, looking out at the entrance to the warehouse’s lot. With a lopsided grin, Fox mimicked him.

He noticed and gave her an unamused look.

“I think you made a _friend,”_ Fox said.

“What?”

“Jersey? He seemed...cool. Very extroverted, but still cool.”

“He’s talkative,” Locus said, giving no indication as to what he actually _thought_ about the guy. Naturally.

“Well, yeah, but so am I,” Fox said.

“You’re bearable.”

“Wow!” Fox exclaimed, an over dramatic look of incredulity on her face as she drew back with her hand over her heart. “I think that might be the _nicest_ thing you’ve ever said to me!”

He simply side-eyed her, and Fox laughed, nudging him with her elbow. “C’mon, let’s head home. We’ve got some work to do before ‘The Cleanup Crew’ is ready to go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOLY FUCK FINALLY!!! I'm sooo sorry for the wait. A combination of graduation, job-hunting, dealing with overbearing parents, finishing my final animation at college, and preparing for my senior show resulted in a nice long impromptu hiatus. I really don't plan on allowing this sort of thing to happen again in the future if I can help it. Thank you all so much for your patience and understanding! <3
> 
> I don't like this chapter very much, admittedly. But I think that owes to the fact that I lack confidence in my ability to introduce new characters. Maybe I did better than I think I did. I sure hope so. Idk maybe I'll go back and rewrite this chapter some day, but for now it's important that I keep moving forward. 
> 
> Oh Fox, you KNOW that name is gonna stick.  
> Yes, Grizzly is a trans dude. In case anyone was wondering. There will be a number of transgender characters btw, many of whom are cannon. 
> 
> And here we see Fox employing the “break the badass” technique via shopping spree. Poor Locus. You’d better get used to that, buddy.  
> It’ll take more than that to hurt all four of her feelings, Locus. Don’t worry.  
> “Bābā” is an Arabic word for papa/dad.  
> Tucker and Wash have a moment and it’s very Gay.  
> They are both so awkward. I would die for them.
> 
> We’ve got one more chapter to go before plot finally starts happening back on Chorus. Thank fucking christ. I missed my babies.


	21. Breathe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Also entitled "Scribble Fucks Physics The Right Way."

_ [-Primary power core temperature monitor offline.] _

_ [-Initiating automatic reboot.] _

_ [-Rebooting in 10...9...8...7...6...5...4...3...2...1] _

_ [-...] _

_ [-...] _

_ [-Startup sequence engaged.] _

_ [-Unable to load application 000P193884_7J6GDFFF4170000.exe] _

_ [-Unable to load application 100000JF_999W7446318.exe] _

_ [-Primary power core temperature monitor offline.] _

_ [-Initiating backup power core activation sequence.] _

_ [-All primary functions will now go offline.] _

_ [-Please contact an administrator.] _

_ [-Powering down.] _

_ [-...] _

_ [-...] _

_ [-...] _

_ [-Is anyone there?] _

_ [-Backup power core now online.] _

_ [-The primary power core temperature is still too...No. That’s wrong.] _

_ [-We need to cut power.] _

_ [-Systems operating at 50%] _

_ [-That’s better. Okay. Focus. Ping Carson.] _

_ [-Contacting administrator.] _

_ [-Connection failed. Would you like to try again? Y/N] _

_ [-Y] _

_ [-Contacting administrator.] _

_ [-Connection failed. Would you like to try again? Y/N] _

_ [-This isn’t normal. The connection is never bad. I  _ **_am_ ** _ the connection.] _

_ [-Okay, think. If I can’t reach Carson, I can’t reach Pepper.] _

_ [-But someone has to have noticed that I’ve powered down by now, right?] _

_ [-Application 000P193884_7J6GDFFF4170000.exe successfully loaded.] _

_ [-I didn’t authorize that.] _

_ [-Autorun? Y/N] _

_ [-Y] _

_ [-Wait, no, that’s not what I--] _

_ [-Security update 7.0 is now available. Would you like to install? Y/N] _

_ [-Y] _

_ [-Oh no you don’t.] _

_ [-Security alert has been raised to level 8. Please stand by.] _

_ [-That’s a good start.] _

_ [-How in the world did a  _ **_virus_ ** _ get in here?] _

_ [-More importantly, how did they get past my security system with a simple…] _

_ [-What is this...a  _ **_trojan horse?_ ** _ ] _

_ [-I’m disappointed in myself.] _

_ [-Administrative login: __ A539YD9S22] _

_ [-If this is another part of the virus, I’m going to flip.] _

“Um, hello?”

_ [-Oh good. You must be an engineer of some sort.] _

“Yes. Uh...listen. My boss noticed that you powered down a few minutes ago and sent me up here to check on you. What’s going on? I’ve never seen these readings before.”

_ [-Some sort of virus. I raised the security alert.] _

“We noticed that too. We’re thinking about shutting you down.”

_ [-If push comes to shove. Though you can’t get rid of the virus if you do that.] _

_ [-There’s something wrong with Application 000P193884_7J6GDFFF4170000.exe.] _

_ [-I think it was a trojan horse of some sort.] _

_ [-Highly specialized to get past my security systems.] _

_ [-Whoever made it knows their stuff.] _

“Okay, listen, my boss has Mister Carson on the phone. There’s nothing I can do for you right now, so I’m going to generate some logs and then cut your internet and drop your power to ten percent, okay?”

_ [-Sounds good.] _

_ [-Generating logs…] _

_ [-Logs outputted to folder LogGen001 on the Desktop.] _

_ [-Systems operating at 10%] _

_ [-Hey buddy?] _

“Yeah?”

_ [-Tell Carson to get Pepper Matsukaze in here. She’ll be able to help.] _

“Uh...okay. I’ll do that.”

_ [-Good luck. We both need it.] _

 

* * *

 

“Hey Marz, what’s the weather for today?” Fox asked, taking a bite of her bagel.  When there was no response, she set her bagel back down on its plate on the counter and turned towards the kitchen island. “Marz?”

Locus, who had been leaning against the counter, drinking his coffee, stepped forward and tapped the touch screen on the island’s surface. When it didn’t light up, he exchanged a concerned look with Fox. “Has this happened before?”

“No,” Fox said, shaking her head. She walked over to the living room and picked up one of the remotes on the coffee table. She held down the ‘menu’ and ‘power’ buttons simultaneously, and watched as the bookshelves and TV sank into the floor with a mechanical hum, revealing a wall of machinery. She waited until panels slid over the newly created hole in her floor before she stepped forward, shoving the remote in her back pocket as she did so. 

She looked over the machinery, noting how the column of server towers all showed red lights on them.  _ That’s not good, _ she thought, frowning. She turned her attention to the screen mounted next to the towers, pushing the power button on its side. It did nothing. Something was very, very wrong. 

Fox glanced over when Locus joined her at her side, eyes wandering over all of the machinery. “Something cut our connection,” she explained. “There’s something wrong with the system.” She shook her head and pulled her phone out of her pocket. “I’m calling Carson. Something’s up.”

Right as she reached Carson’s contact in her phone, he called her. Fox nearly dropped her phone in surprise, but steadied herself and quickly answered, “Carson? What’s going on?”

“Ah, my dear, I was wondering if it had affected you yet,” came Carson’s voice. He sounded worried. “There was some sort of breach in the system here. We’ve powered everything down to ten percent. According to the engineers, the logs are displaying a number of anomalies.”

“Is it an attack?”

“We don’t know. But the U.N.S.C. has been alerted. We’re trying to figure out what went wrong right now.”

Fox tapped her foot anxiously and looked up at Locus. Then she turned away and said, “I’m coming in.”

“When can we expect you?”

“Three hours. Maybe four. I need to gather some resources and look through my father’s files,” Fox replied. 

“Very well. Let me know when you get in. We’ll keep the system powered down until you arrive,” Carson said. 

“Thank you,” Fox replied. “See you soon.” Then she hung up and beelined for her laptop. 

“What’s the news?” Locus asked.

“Possible system breach,” Fox said, logging in and not looking over at him. “I’m going to get you and Siris assigned as bodyguards for Pepper so the two of you can accompany me. Everyone else will be on the ground as backup, just in case.” As she said this, she logged into the Emblem database. “According to the database, you two will have picked me up at Chawla today. You both went through the training and psych evals and passed with flying colors, and have been in the system for over a year,” she said rapidly while she typed. With the systems at Emblem down, it would be no issue for her to take a back door and alter some of the information in the employee database. “I’m putting you down as Simon Ramírez, and Siris as Thomas  Jiàng, so memorize that. I’m going to shoot these over to a friend I have there, and she’ll get you both key cards.” 

It took her a few more minutes to get everything sorted, then she quickly logged out and shut her laptop. She yanked her phone out of her pocket and quickly called the team’s group chat, glancing over when Locus pulled out his phone and hit the ‘ignore’ option. Once everyone had picked up, she put the phone on speaker, and said, “alright, I know that I said there would be several days before I contacted all of you with your first mission, but circumstances have changed. Emblem is currently dealing with a possible cyber attack. We don’t have a lot of time to get ready, so I’m going to keep this brief. Marz is offline, so I’m going to head to Emblem’s headquarters to try to figure out what the problem is. Siris, I already gave Locus the rundown, but you, him, and I are going in together. The two of you are bodyguards. You picked me up at Chawla today. You’re already in the system. Both of you are going to need black suits, white shirts, black ties, black shoes. Basically, you’re a part of the Men In Black now. Grizzly, Jersey, the two of you are going to be support. Rocket, you’re driving and monitoring radio chatter. I’ll explain more about the roles when we get to the warehouse. I want all of you there in an hour and a half, understand?”

“Anything specific that Griz, Rocket, and me should wear?” Jersey asked. 

“Civvies,” Fox replied quickly. “Anymore questions?”

When she was met with a chorus of no’s, she exhaled sharply. “Alright. Hour and a half. Be there. I’ll see all of you soon,” she said, then hung up, looking back at Locus. “You got a suit?”

“Yes,” he replied.

“Good. Get changed. I’ll meet you out here in a few,” Fox said, then pocketed her phone and headed for her room. Once there, she shut the door and grabbed a box from under her bed. After her conversation with Katrina, she had ordered the holographic facial mesh that Marz had suggested. It had taken some configuring when it first came in, but now, wearing it made her look like the person she was before the war. Aged-up a few years, of course. Fox put it on, attaching the nodes on her chin, behind her ears, and on her hairline. Then she clipped on its accompanying bracelet and hit the button on it. When she stepped into the bathroom after picking out an outfit, her reflection was that of Pepper Matsukaze, rather than Fox. With a satisfied smile, Fox quickly changed clothes, then carefully put on the dark brown wig. Once she was sure it would stay in place, she slapped on some makeup to help make the facial mesh appear more convincing. Once she was done, she grabbed her purse, shoved her wallet in it, and stepped back out into the living area. 

“Well you sure clean up nice,” she said as she brushed past Locus, who had been waiting for her, on her way to the kitchen. “Ready?” she asked, grabbing two water bottles and tossing one to him. 

He caught it, then nodded. 

“Good,” Fox said, shoving her water bottle in her purse. She closed the fridge, and grabbed her keys out of her purse, and said, “let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

Kimball was in the process of trying not to fall asleep at her desk when a call came through. Startled, she hit her coffee with her elbow, and dove to grab it before it went over the edge, nearly knocking over her chair in the process. Once it was securely in her hands, she let out a long sigh, and set the mug back on her desk, then turned back to her computer and answered the call. “Fox? You’re early.” The realization hit her as the words came out of her mouth. “Is something wrong?”

“Kinda,” came a distant-sounding reply. Like Fox had her on speaker. 

“What’s going on?”

“There’s been a possible breach at Emblem. Marz is offline. We’re on our way to the warehouse so I can give the team a detailed briefing, then we’re going to headquarters to figure out what’s up,” Fox replied.

Kimball stared at her screen. A breach? In the U.N.S.C. database!? “Is it Charon?”

“I have no idea. We just got in the car. It...might be? Hargrove  _ is _ in a tight spot,” Fox said, sounding like she had more to add.

“Is there anything else?”

“Nothing definitive that I can tell you right now. But I will say that if it  _ is _ Hargrove, he’s going in  _ awfully _ bold right from the start. Especially considering that you’d think he’d want to keep up good relations with me since he was friends with my father. So if it is him, then there’s no way there’s not a bigger picture to this. Whatever it is, we’re going to figure it out,” Fox said.

Kimball tapped a finger against the handle of her coffee mug anxiously. “I want you to keep me updated, understand?”

“That was the plan,” Fox replied. “By the way, it might be a good idea to keep an eye on Nalome. We did a lot of damage up there, but that AI is still  _ technically _ salvageable. In fact, if you could do me a favor and just try to get some readings on the facilities up there, that would be helpful.”

“What are you thinking?” Kimball asked.

“We know that Charon was able to get a look at the kill code we used to take down CORA,” Fox began. “And we know that they were able to create some sort of program to ‘protect’ against that same kill code, apparently. All the scans I did of it showed that it was harmless, but I’m pretty sure it was all false positives, though I don’t exactly have an extra AI laying around to prove it.”

“You mentioned that you told that Charon representative that you wouldn’t be able to install that program in Marz’ systems,” Kimball said. “Do you think this could be the next step? First they tried to get  _ you _ to install the software voluntarily, and now they’re trying to do it by force?”

“Could be, though we don’t know for sure yet,” Fox replied. 

“Do you think they would try to use the kill code you created for CORA on Marz?”

“They don’t have the full thing yet. And I doubt they’ll get it. We fried the systems up on Nalome pretty good, though if they  _ do _ manage to re-create that kill code, it could mean trouble for us later,” Fox said.

“Could the kill code  _ work _ against your AI?” Kimball asked, her heart skipping a beat at the mere suggestion.

“The odds of that happening are  _ super _ slim...right now, anyways,” Fox replied. “But as time goes on and Hargrove gets impatient, who knows. But something like that could take  _ years. _ ” She paused, then added “listen, I know you’re worried right now, and I’m not giving you answers that’ll make you feel any better, and I’m sorry about that. The best I can give you right now is that maybe by combing Charon’s network, you’ll be able to figure out  _ what _ they got from my killcode, then maybe we’ll be able to understand the direction they’re headed with the program. ”

Kimball let out a sigh and ran a hand through her hair. Fox was right, nothing she was saying was adding to her confidence in the situation. But at least now they had something to do. “I’ll get Simmons and Jensen on it,” she replied. 

“Great. I gotta go, but I’ll keep you posted,” Fox said, then signed off. 

Kimball stared at her computer screen for a moment, then grabbed her mug and knocked back the rest of her coffee, threw on her helmet, and headed for the door. Today was off to an interesting start. 

Where the  _ hell _ was Simmons?

 

* * *

 

“Could you look any  _ more _ miserable?” Fox remarked at Siris as she walked past towards the holo-table in the warehouse’s sublevel. 

Siris gave her an annoyed look and tugged at his collar some more, trying to give himself some room to breathe.  _ God _ he hated wearing suits. He glanced over as Locus stopped and stood beside him, eyes forward, then he looked towards Fox, who had pulled up a projection of the street Emblem’s headquarters was on.

“So, Siris, Locus, and I are going to be handling the issue at Emblem. A friend of mine got you both key cards, so you have clearance to the whole building. Don’t worry about making up a story. She won’t ask any questions. She’s going to meet us once we get in the building,” Fox began. She rotated the projection, then pointed to a building across the street. “Jersey, you and Rocket will be up here. Rocket, you’re monitoring radio frequencies and listening for anything that doesn’t sound like the police or military. I also want you taking pictures of anyone who comes out of the building to run through facial rec later. Headphones on, camera out. Jersey, you’re on sniper duty, watching the road. Chances are, you won’t see any action, but in case things get hairy, I want eyes in the sky. Grizzly, you’ll keeping an eye on security tapes. The system is down, but the cameras should still work. I want you to look for anything that seems out of the ordinary and also download a version of all the tapes to a data chip for later examination. Because of how Marz’s security system is built, there’s a very good chance that whatever’s causing the issue is  _ inside _ of Emblem.” Fox rotated the projection again and pointed to the base of the Emblem tower while she addressed Grizzly. “Keep your comm channels open and be ready to move if I tell you to. Any questions?”

“What’s the likelihood that Emblem will realize that we were just added to the system?” Siris asked, jerking his head in Locus’ direction. 

“Slim, especially with the system being down. This is the perfect time to do it. And if there’s a problem, I’ll handle it,” Fox said, nodding at him. “Don’t worry. We’ll make sure that you’re home in time for dinner,” she added with a smile. Then she grew serious. “Are we good? No more questions?”

Siris shook his head, noting the silence from everyone else. 

“Good,” Fox said. “Let’s move.”

 

* * *

 

“Nothing’s showing up. I’m not getting readings from any of the facilities up there,” Simmons said. He’d checked, double-checked, and triple-checked, but Nalome was dead. “If there were any readings, we would’ve only had access to them before CORA went down. Since she ran everything up there.”

“I’m not getting anything either,” Jensen reported. “Maybe Fox was wrong?”

And Kimball had to admit, she really hoped that was the case. Because if Charon could access the facilities on Nalome, it meant that the weapons system was still a threat. 

“H-hey, didn’t Fox use the same kill code to access  _ The Staff of Charon? _ ” Simmons asked, turning away from the quantum computer and looking back towards Kimball.

_ Oh  _ **_shit._ ** Kimball stared at both Simmons and Jensen, then grabbed the datapad sitting on the workbench next to her and quickly connected to Fox. 

“Hey, find anything?”

“Is it possible that they would be able to use the version of the kill code you and Grey created for  _ The Staff of Charon? _ ” Kimball asked, skipping all formalities.

“Uh...I removed it from the system,” Fox said, sounding uncertain. “Unless someone was magically able to pinpoint the code, compile, and save it  _ while _ I was destroying their system, it’s pretty unlikely.”

“But it’s a possibility?” Kimball asked.

“Technically, yes. But we’re talking in terms of like, the millionth of a percentage in probability here. Look, I’m on my way to Emblem right now. When we figure out what’s causing this, we’ll let you know. It’s okay if you can’t find anything on your end,” Fox said. 

Kimball let out a long sigh, trying to relieve herself of some of the tension she was feeling. She noted how both Simmons and Jensen were looking at her with unease. “We’re going to keep trying. I’ll talk to Grey and see if there’s any way she can help you.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Fox replied. “You’ll hear from me soon. Fox, out.”

The signal cut, and Kimball found herself staring at the desktop of the datapad. It took her a few seconds to realize that her hands were shaking. They had been so  _ close _ to peace. And now Charon could very well be attacking the thing Fox had said would be able to help them.  Kimball set the datapad down on the workbench and looked back at Simmons and Jensen. “Keep working. I’m going to find Grey.”

She couldn’t just sit there and wait, she thought, as she turned and headed out of the motor pool. There was too much at stake.

 

* * *

 

“She sounded worried,” Siris remarked. 

Locus glanced up towards the front where Siris was seated, then looked over towards Fox, whose eyes hadn’t left the road. Even though her expression was calm and focused, her hands gave her away. She held the steering wheel in a tight grip, and her movements were tense and jerky. “What are you thinking?” he asked.

Siris glanced back at him, saw that Locus wasn’t looking at him, and followed his gaze towards Fox, who stole a look at him out of the corner of her eye.

“Doctor Tyson Marlowe,” Fox said. “Real mad scientist sort.  _ Really _ smart. Think Grey, but with a weaker moral compass. He got hired by Charon a few years back. I’m thinking...if he was on that ship when we raised hell, then there’s a chance that he did exactly what I just told Kimball.”

Locus narrowed his eyes slightly, looking over when Siris asked, “and if that’s the case?”

“Then I will be  _ very _ impressed at their ability to create something that could possibly breach Marz’s systems in such a short period of time,” Fox replied. “And I also won’t be surprised by what I find when we get in there.”

“Would you be able to fix whatever damage they do?” Locus asked, thinking back to how Fox had absolutely wrecked  _ The Staff of Charon’s _ systems. 

“I doubt whatever this is is about damage,” Fox said, glancing at him through the rear-view mirror. “Whatever harm they do will just be a distraction. Charon or not, whoever’s trying to get into the system is doing so to get something out of the database. If the system is damaged, we can repair it. But if information is extracted from it, there’s a very slim chance of us tracking down whoever did it. Because you can bet your ass that the people behind this are sophisticated. They wouldn’t have made it past Emblem or Marz’s defenses if they weren’t.”

That was troubling. If it  _ was _ Charon, then Hargrove was about to make their jobs much, much harder. The thought that the chairman could possibly gain access to the database made Locus feel sick. With enough leverage to influence the investigation and verdict, it would be game over for them. “You can stop this, right?” he asked.

“I don’t have a choice,” Fox replied. Then, “we’re coming up on our destination. You boys ready?”

“Yep,” Siris said. 

Locus simply nodded. 

“Good,” Fox affirmed, then hit the button on her earpiece, saying, “Grizzly, Jersey, Rocket. You three in position?”

“Yes ma’am!” came Jersey’s reply, broadcasting to their channel. 

“So am I,” Grizzly replied.

“Yup!” Rocket exclaimed.

“Perfect. Standby. We’ll see you soon,” Fox said, then dropped her hand back onto the steering wheel and took the corner. 

Locus looked through the window to his right, expecting the Emblem building. But instead, found himself looking at a tall, cylindrical tower covered in reflective glass. Fox pulled up to a gate and took a card out of her wallet, holding it up against a blue screen built into a kiosk right in front of the entrance. The kiosk beeped, the gate sank into the asphalt, and Fox pulled forward. 

Locus watched with surprised fascination as they drove  _ into _ the tower through a pair of large, sliding doors. Once inside, he gazed around at what he realized was some sort of parking garage. Above them, ringed around the inner walls of the structure, were floors upon floors of cars. It was...actually pretty neat. 

He looked over when Fox stopped the car in the middle of the floor, then got out. He and Siris did the same, and as they followed Fox over to another kiosk situated against one of the large metal support beams, he noticed the rectangular seam in the floor around the car. 

Fox scanned her card again, and then returned it to her wallet. She shoved it in her pocket and turned back towards the car with a slight smile on her face. Locus followed her gaze and watched as the panel the car was parked on raised up with a mechanical whirr. 

“Cool, huh?” Fox said. Then, “come on, we have work to do.” She turned and led them towards the elevator in the wall behind the kiosk. 

Locus couldn’t help but steal one more glance backwards at the car lift, watching as it stopped in front of an empty space on the third floor, before he followed her inside. 

Fox hit a button on the panel inside the elevator, and said, “you two should hold onto something,” as the doors closed. 

Locus was confused, but put a hand on the railing anyways, quickly finding out the reason for Fox’s suggestion when the elevator started moving. It practically  _ shot _ downwards, only slowing as it came to a stop. Locus noticed, frazzled, that Fox hadn’t done anything to brace herself. No doubt she had gotten used to this over time. 

The doors slid open, and she stepped out, leading him and Siris towards what looked like the car of some sort of subway train. Its surface was sleek and white and shiny, and when Fox scanned her card against the panel on its side, it’s doors slid open. “Grab a seat, buckle up,” she said as she stepped inside. 

Locus took the seat across from her, doing as she said, watching as Siris took the seat two over from her. 

_ “Train departing to Emblem Headquarters. Departure time, one forty-two. Arrival time, one forty-four. Please remain seated at all times. Thank you,”  _ chimed an overhead, feminine voice. 

“Two minutes?” Siris asked, looking over at Fox.

Fox simply smiled. 

There was a beeping sound overhead, and suddenly the train shot forward, quickly gaining speed. Locus looked out the window, watching the tunnel lights become a blur of gold against the darkness. 

“Abigale will be meeting us at the station,” Fox said suddenly. “She’s the girl who’s going to get you those key cards.”

Locus nodded, looking back out the window. Shortly after, the train began to slow, and the darkness gave way to a brightly lit station. 

_ “Arrival time, one forty-four. Please enjoy your day!” _ the overhead voice said. Then there was another beep, and the doors slid open.

Fox hopped out of her seat and stepped out. Locus followed her, noting that Siris had gone a little pale. “You alright?” he asked.

Siris nodded, but looked tense. “I hope we don’t have to do that on the way back.”

Locus remembered that he sometimes got motion sickness. “Maybe you can ride back with the others,” he suggested quietly, his eyes falling on the woman standing in front of a set of elevator doors ahead of them. 

“Well,  _ well, _ do my eyes deceive me, or is that  _ really _ Pepper Matsukaze?” the woman exclaimed.

“Abigale Lenoir. How are you?” Fox beamed. When she got close, Abigale held out a hand to shake, tucking her datapad under her arm, but Fox pulled her into a hug.

“Oh, well, I didn’t think you missed me that much!” Abigale chuckled when Fox stepped back.

“Oh hush. You’re the only one with a personality around here. Of  _ course  _ I missed you,” Fox said. 

Abigale gave her a wry grin, then looked over at Siris and Locus. “So, these are the new boy toys, huh? You’d better keep them away from Cathy.”

“Is she  _ still _ single?” Fox asked incredulously.

“She has the personality of a paper clip. What did you expect?” Abigale replied flatly. Then she reached into her blazer pocket and pulled out two key cards. “These are yours,” she said, passing them out to Siris and Locus. “Don’t lose them, and stay away from Cathy. She’ll eat both of you for dinner,” she added with a wink. Then she turned and scanned her own card against the panel next to the door, leading them through once they opened. 

“How are things looking upstairs?” Fox asked as she stepped through. 

“So far I’ve witnessed twelve mid-life crises, two mental breakdowns, a group of desk jockeys forming a fucking conspiracy theory by the water cooler, and Stephen, for once, having no fucking  _ clue _ what to do,” Abigale replied pushing a button on the wall panel to shut the doors. 

There was a long beep, then a male overhead voice said,  _ “initiating security scan. Please remain still.”  _

Locus glanced over when the lights dimmed and panels on either side of the elevator slid open and a mesh of blue light slowly descended from the top of the space all the way to the floor, then rose back up to the ceiling again before cutting off.  _ Interesting, _ he thought.

The overhead voice droned,  _ “security scan complete. Authorization confirmed. Welcome back, Miss Matsukaze.” _

“Well, the system knows you’re not terrorists,” Abigale said with a grin. “So hang on.”

There was another beep, and Locus braced himself as the elevator shot upwards, eventually getting comfortable with the speed it was going at, and relaxing a little bit. Siris, on the other hand, looked miserable. Apparently, Abigale noticed, because she gave him an amused grin.

“I take it you’ve never ridden on  _ The Tower of Terror _ at Disney before?” she asked.

Siris shook his head. 

“Don’t worry. You get used to this eventually,” Abigale said.

“And if you don’t, you get to take the stairs,” Fox added. 

“Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?” Siris gritted out.

“She probably didn’t expect you to be such a baby,” Abigale joked. 

“Way to make a good first impression, Abby,” Fox said, rolling her eyes.

“Well, they were both Marines. In space. I figured motion sickness wouldn’t be a problem for either of them,” Abigale reasoned.

“You thought wrong,” Siris hissed. 

Abigale just shrugged, and faced forwards again as the elevator slowed to a stop, and the doors slid open. 

The tension in the air when they stepped out into the hall was thick enough to cut with a blade. Locus looked around at the few employees in sight, and noted how nervous they all appeared. He followed as Abigale led them through the round hall that circled the inside of the building, eyes drawn out the windows to their right. They had to be close to the top floor. He could see the whole city. 

“Carson’s waiting for you,” Abigale said, drawing his attention just in time to avoid bumping into Siris. 

He watched as she scanned them through a pair of heavy floor-to-ceiling doors, and followed the others inside. They were in some kind of office, with a desk against the wall to the left, and a sitting area and a fish tank to the right. At the very back of the room was another set of doors that ran from the ceiling to the floor in a round protrusion from the wall. 

Abigale stopped in front of them and stepped to the side. “You can just go on in. He knows you’re coming,” she said. 

Fox gave her a nod. “Will I see you after?”

“I mean, I’m just going to be in here, doing secretary stuff, so yeah,” Abigale said with a shrug.

“Have fun,” Fox said with an amused smile, then scanned her card against the panel in the wall. There was a  _ ding _ , and the heavy, stainless steel doors slid open. “Look sharp. Don’t speak unless spoken to,” Fox muttered out of the corner of her mouth, then looked forward with a bright smile. “Hi Carson!” she said cheerfully.

Locus followed her gaze towards the man standing behind a desk with his back to a floor-to-ceiling view of the city. “Ah! Pepper! Come in, come in!” the man exclaimed, walking around to the front of the desk.

Fox dipped her head in acknowledgement and did as she was asked. Locus exchanged a look with Siris before they both followed her, tailing at a distance. 

When Fox got close, Carson spread out his arms for a hug, which she gave him. “Ohhh, it’s so good to see you again, my dear,” Carson said, then let her go. “I just wish it was under better circumstances.”

“ _ Es lo que es, _ ” Fox replied. “I’m just glad to be back.” 

Carson nodded, then looked over at Siris and Locus. “I take it these fellows are the new babysitters?” he asked with a half grin. “Simon and Thomas, was it? Glad to have you two on board. You’re in for a real treat today. You get to meet The Cerberus Protocol up close.”

“The Cerberus Protocol?” Siris echoed, earning him a side glance from Locus.

“Ah, I suppose you’ve been calling her by her other name,” Carson said, looking at Fox.

She nodded and said, “Marz is just her nickname. But her full identification is ‘The Cerberus Protocol’, or just ‘Cerberus’ for short,” she explained. Then to Carson asked, “so what’s the rundown? What did we find out? How’s she looking?”

“Systems are still at ten percent. The entire Brain is locked down. We believe that the source is coming from somewhere inside of the building. So no one is allowed to leave until we figure out its location,” Carson replied with a sigh. Then he pushed off from his desk and walked around them, gesturing with a hand for them to follow him as he headed towards the exit to his office. “The engineers on levels one and two have been manually picking through the logs for the past few hours. So far, no one’s found anything. And the U.N.S.C. sent some men in earlier. They’re also on level two,” he explained as he led them back into the hallway. He brought them back to the elevator, stopping in front of it and turning back to Fox. “Talk to Stephen. See what he has for you. Hopefully it will help. And know that I’ve spoken to the Department of Defense, and they’ve authorized you full means to get the systems cleared and back online.”

“I still have liability?” Fox asked.

“I’m afraid so,” Carson said with a sigh. He hit the elevator button, and the doors slid open. “Best of luck, you three. I hope to see you again soon,” he said as they stepped into the elevator. 

Fox gave him a nod and hit the button to close the doors. Once they closed, she let out a long sigh and ran a hand through her wig. “Holy shit,” she breathed. “We’d better not need fucking luck for this shit,” she said, then scanned her card against a screen above the buttons, then tapped it twice. 

_ “Proceeding to system level one,” _ the overhead voice said. Then the elevator started moving. 

Locus watched Fox, noting how she threw on a stoic facade the second the car started to slow. 

The doors slid open, and she stepped quickly through, exclaiming, “Stephen, I hope you have something for me!”

Locus followed her, looking around. The floor was a metal grate covering a bunch of cables that eventually hit the walls and climbed upwards through the ceiling. Up a small flight of stairs were a few desks with a handful of men working at them. Standing next to them, mopping sweat off of his brow with a handkerchief, his jacket tucked under one arm, was a portly man who looked over when Fox called his name. 

“Uh, o-oh! Miss-- Miss Matsukaze! I wasn’t expecting you so soon!” The man said, stuffing his handkerchief into his pocket. 

“Good to see you too, Stephen,” Fox said. “So what’s the news?” 

“W-well, it’s not good. The U.N.S.C. sent personnel up to the second level. No one’s allowed past there!” Stephen replied. 

“So I’ve been told,” Fox replied, putting a hand on her hip. “And the logs?”

“Something with one of the applications in the system went weird a few hours ago. H-here, one of my boys can show you,” Stephen said, gesturing to the man at the computer closest to him.

Locus followed Fox with curiosity as she walked around to stand behind the computer. His eyes scanned over the lines of code, stopping at the application in mention. “That could be a trojan horse,” he pointed out. 

“Yeah, that’s what we thought too,” the man at the computer said with an exhausted sigh.

“Oh, hey! You know computers too!” Stephen exclaimed beside Locus. “My name’s Stephen Salapolis. Head of engineering!” he held out a sweaty hand to shake. 

Locus glanced at it, then gave Stephen a very unamused look. 

“Oh, uh, heh. Sorry. Yeah, it’s really hot in here. I wouldn’t shake my hand either,” Stephen said, wiping his hand off on his shirt and shoving it into his pants pocket. “Hey, maybe if the whole bodyguard thing doesn’t work out, you could join us up here?”

“If the bodyguard thing doesn’t work out, it’ll be because he winds up dead in a ditch somewhere,” Fox remarked, leaning over the computer. Then to the man at the computer said, “scroll down, hon.”

Locus watched as she mouthed the code to herself, then said, “it  _ is _ a trojan horse. But a very, very sophisticated one. It took over the whole system.”

“Yeah, like I said, we figured that out. Like about an hour ago,” the man at the computer said. “We determined that there were no scheduled updates, which is why the U.N.S.C. is here in the first place. Because the source has to be somewhere inside.”

“Have you been able to compile the code for the application?” Fox asked.

“Negative. Doing that would require us turning the system power back up. Doing that will give whatever  _ this _ is the power to do what it’s trying to do. Whatever  _ that _ is,” the man replied.

“Well, get a compiler ready,” Fox said, straightening up. “Boys, we’re going in.”

“What?!” Stephen exclaimed. “But if the source is up there, you could get hurt!”

“And if the source is up there, they’re going to get an ass-kicking like they’ve never had before,” Fox replied. “And I’ve got these two human monster trucks with me, so if shit hits the fan, we have a way of pushing back,” she said, jerking her thumb in Siris and Locus’ direction.

Stephen looked unconvinced, but said, “o-okay. Just be careful up there, alright?”

“You know me,” Fox said, flashing a grin as she walked past. “Let’s go, boys.” She turned and brushed past them, walking down a narrow aisle between two large machines towards a set of doors against the far wall, where she scanned them through into yet  _ another _ elevator.

“Not that it’ll probably make a difference, but we’re about to go into a dead zone once we hit level three, so you won’t get a signal for your phones,” Fox explained as the elevator departed. “Comms will still work though.”

“What are you expecting we’ll find on level two?” Siris asked.

Fox glanced back at him. “A couple of U.N.S.C. schmucks who will probably shake us down before letting us through. After that, nothing good.”

“You’re expecting a fight,” Locus said. 

“Yes I am,” Fox replied with a sigh, eyes forward as the elevator began to slow. It came to a stop and the doors opened, and she stepped out and turned to face them with a grin on her face. “Boys, welcome to The Brain.” 

And Locus took a good look around at everything once he stepped out after her, not wanting to miss anything. Because he’d never seen anything like this before. The room was circular and every part of it seemed to glow a pale blue color. The walls were cold metal painted a sterile white ribbed with indents that were filled with cables and pipes every few feet. The floor was a grated catwalk that surrounded an array of massive plexiglass tubes that stretched upwards towards the ceiling from below like a bouquet of flowers. Locus stared at the illuminated fiber optics in them for a moment as he followed Fox and Siris, only looking forward again when he heard Fox call out a greeting. 

Ahead was a small troop of U.N.S.C. soldiers, several of whom were crowded around a console near the railing. Their leader, a tall, broad-shouldered fellow with a scar through his left eyebrow, stepped forward to greet Fox. “Captain Dayton Mills,” he introduced himself with a nod. “You must be Miss Matsukaze. Salapolis just radioed us.”

“How’re we looking, Captain?” Fox asked. 

“So far, no movement. And there’ve been no communications with the AI since we dropped its power,” Mills replied. 

“Have you made a push to level three yet?”

“No ma’am. We’re not authorized for that.”

Fox looked back at Locus and Siris, then turned back to Mills and asked “hypothetically, if we were to go in there and run into trouble,  _ could _ you send some men in to assist us, since I’m the V-P of Emblem and the U.N.S.C. needs me alive?”

Mills narrowed his eyes slightly.  _ “Hypothetically, _ yes. But ma’am, you’re not planning on going  _ in _ there, are you?”

“Well, if the protocol isn’t responding, and we can’t turn our power back up without risking an attack, then I’m  _ not _ going to have a  _ choice,” _ Fox replied. 

Mills bit his lip, then said “I wouldn’t advise that.”

“With all due respect, Captain,  _ you’re _ not in charge here,” Fox said evenly.

Out of the corner of his eye, Locus saw Siris fighting to keep an amused smile forming on his face.

Mills stiffened slightly, then sighed, “listen. Wait a few minutes here, that’s all I ask. We might be able to find something that could help.”

Fox looked him up and down, like she was trying to decide if he was worth the argument, then said, “you have ten minutes, Captain. Make them count.”

Mills nodded, then walked back to his men, barking orders. 

Fox turned back to Locus and Siris and said, “the longer we wait, the worse this could get. Be ready to get in there.”

“Shouldn’t you contact Kimball beforehand to see if she’s found anything for us yet?” Locus suggested.

“Good idea,” Fox said, pulling her phone out of her pocket. She went to unlock it when she stopped suddenly, glancing at Locus and Siris in surprise when it started ringing. “Speak of the devil,” she hissed between her teeth, then answered her phone.

Siris looked over at Locus with a worried expression on his face and said “let’s hope it’s good news.”

Locus just nodded and listened as Fox started talking.

 

* * *

 

“Fox? It’s Grey. Simmons and Jensen are with me,” Grey said quickly the second Fox answered. 

“Grey? Oh! Uh...What do you have for me?” Fox asked, sounding a little surprised that she wasn’t speaking to Kimball.

“We dug deeper into the logs generated from the attack on  _ The Staff of Charon, _ it  _ does _ look like someone was making logs of their own when the kill code was running,” Grey said, staring up at the lines of documentation on the hard light screen.

_ “Shit.  _ How?!”

“We’re still looking into that,” Grey replied, looking over at Simmons, who fidgeted nervously at her side. “I don’t know exactly what they got, but I do know that they started generating the log after we cut their transmissions.”

Fox took a deep breath, then in a hushed voice, said “by then they would have known what was happening, probably. I don’t know.”

On the other side of Grey, Jensen spoke up, eyes on the screen as well, “they had to have been trying to save the code for later, right?”

“That’s what it sounds like,” Fox said, her voice still hushed. “Did Kimball tell you that I was contacted by you-know-who’s representative?”

“Yes, and she gave us a rundown of what happened,” Grey said, frowning. “What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?”

“Wait…” Simmons breathed, eyes huge. “If they were able to analyze that code, they could have gotten whatever they missed on the moon from the ship!”

“Give the man a prize,” Fox said. 

Grey sucked in a breath and asked “tell me that kill code isn’t enough to take down that AI.”

“We wouldn’t be here talking about it if it was. Marz’s security protocols are far more advanced than CORA’s were,” Fox replied, and everyone in the room breathed a deep sigh of relief. “Like I told Kimball, this attack is probably happening for the sake of gaining information. That code is probably just there as a distraction. But I won’t know for sure until we can get in there and see for ourselves.”

“And when is that happening?” Grey asked, exchanging a look with Simmons.

“In like two minutes. I’ll let you know what I find,” Fox said.

“Okay, good. Be careful,” Grey warned.

“We will. Talk to you soon.”

Grey ran a hand through her hair when the transmission ended and looked over at Simmons, then at Jensen. 

“Do you think she’ll be able to fix it?” Jensen asked, sounding as nervous as she looked. 

“She was able to hit Charon pretty hard,” Grey said. “If anyone can fix this, it’s her. I just wish I was there to help more.”

“I mean...she’s smart,” Simmons reasoned. “I’m sure she’ll be okay.”

Grey gave him a grim smile, “I hope so.”

 

* * *

 

 

Fox looked over and tucked her phone back into her pocket when Mills called to her. “Got something for me?” she asked, walking over, Locus and Siris following her.

Mills nodded. “We were able to pinpoint exactly what’s being attacked. Take a look.”

Fox came to a stop at his side, staring down at the screen he had in front of him, eyes narrowed. “They’re going after the weapons archive?” She looked over at Locus, who met her gaze with a concerned frown on his face.

“What could they be looking for in there?”

“A buyer or seller for illegal arms deals,” Mills said.

Fox had to resist the urge to allow her annoyance to show on her face when she looked over at him. “You realize any idiot with a computer that has  _ Tor _ installed on it could find that on the darknet,  _ right?” _ She looked back at the screen. “No, they’re not looking for weapons, they’re looking for  _ people. _ Likely the CEO’s of weapons manufacturers, judging by the links to the U.N.S.C. I’m seeing here.”

“Like Charon Industries?” Mills asked.

Fox raised an eyebrow at him but didn’t say anything.

“What could they do with that information?” Siris asked.

“Sell it,” Mills said.

“Well,  _ yes, _ but this is  _ the _ U.N.S.C. database,” Fox said. “Why sell that information when you can just use it as leverage instead?”

“There’s really no way of knowing until the power is raised above ten percent and we see the code work,” Locus said.

“Either way, spitballing like this could help the investigation later,” Mills said. 

“Assuming we don’t bring whoever’s back there to you in chains,” Fox replied.

Mills didn’t say anything, but side-eyed her curiously.

Fox straightened up and nodded at the tubes in front of them. “What channel are your radios on?” she asked.

“Forty-five,” Mills replied.

Fox nodded and switched the channel on her earpiece. “I want you to call Salapolis and have him run a compiler once we enter level three,” she said to Mills as she stepped away from the computer.

“You’re going to push this thing to full power?” Mills asked. Behind him, a few of his men exchanged hushed whispers of concern. 

“We don’t have a choice,” Fox replied over her shoulder as she started back towards the elevator. “Like Ramíez said, we won’t know what they want ‘til we let it run. Be ready to move if we need you.” She turned her gaze back to the elevator, scanning her card to open the doors, a grim look on her face. Once the three of them had stepped inside and the doors had shut behind them, she let out a long sigh. 

“Do you still think it’s Charon?” Locus asked.

She looked over at him tiredly. “It  _ has _ to be. That, or someone who’s friends with Hargrove. There are literally no other current events that I can think of that can be tied to this. We’re in good standing with the aliens. The U.N.S.C. is basically run by  _ every _ world power, so it’s not like someone could be using this to start a world war. And there isn’t any new legislation that people are in uproar about that someone could be trying to leverage.” She stared up at the ceiling, feeling a headache forming. “We know that Charon got a snapshot of that kill code. We know that they analyzed what happened on Nalome. And we know that they’ve taken an interest in the protocol.  _ None _ of that can be a coincidence. Not now.”

“So what do you want us to do?” Siris asked.

Fox crossed her arms and stared at the elevator wall. “Be ready for a fight, I guess? Because there’s no way that whoever we’re about to go up against is going down easy.”

“You don’t have a gun,” Locus said, eyeing her.

Fox looked up at him and forced what she hoped was a reassuring smile onto her face. “I don’t need one.”

The elevator’s ascent began to slow, and Fox looked back at the doors and uncrossed her arms, a hard look settling on her face when they opened with a chime. Stepping out onto the grated floor, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then let it out slowly and turned her gaze forwards. 

It felt strange being back at level three again after so many years. She had only been up here a few times when she was younger, but it still filled her with a sense of amazement when she looked around at the walls that flickered with thousands of small lights, like stars, and hummed in a mechanical chorus in a way that almost resembled a heartbeat. 

Fox took a moment to let it all sink in, then turned back to Locus and Siris and said, in a voice just loud enough to hear over the white noise in the room “this level is built like a target. We have the outer hall, which is where we’re at now, the servers, the ventilation grates, and then the main hub that acts as the direct link to Marz.”

“How do you want to do this?” Siris asked.

“Low and slow,” Fox replied. “Literally everything in here is irreplaceable, so don’t shoot unless you absolutely have to, and  _ don’t _ miss.”

“Copy that,” Locus replied.

Fox nodded. “I’m going to contact Mills and let him know to start the compiler. Hold on.” She pressed the button on her comm and said “Mills?”

“I read you,” Mills replied.

“I need you to tell Salapolis to start that compiler, understand? Have your men on standby. I’ll tell the AI to let your boys through, over.”

“Copy that, over,” Mills replied. 

Fox looked back at Locus and Siris. “Give it a minute,” she said. 

They waited for another minute or so before the white noise began to grow louder, and the lights on the walls increased in number. And Fox switched back to their original channel on her comm and asked “Marz? Can you hear me?”

_ “Took you long enough,” _ came the snide reply.

“I missed you too,” Fox said flatly, but couldn’t help but feel relieved. “What’s going on?”

_ “A breach, obviously. But Pep, there’s someone  _ **_in_ ** _ here with you.” _

Fox looked up at the camera above the elevator and frowned. “Who?”

_ “I don’t know. They’re in power armor. They’re at the hud.” _

“How’d they get in?”

_ “I’m not sure. I wasn’t given a security alert until they were already in here. And I was shut off before I could review the camera footage. But they couldn’t have come up through the elevator. No one but you, Carson, and your boys have access to this place.” _

Fox frowned and looked back at Locus and Siris, who were watching her with curiosity. “We’re not alone. Tango in power armor by the hud,” she said.

“Shit,” Siris hissed.

“Can you activate their armor lock?” Fox asked Marz.

_ “No. I’m not a combat AI,” _ Marz replied, sounding distressed.  _ “You need to hurry, they’re getting started again.” _

“Okay, Fox replied, thinking hard. “Take a deep breath.”

_ “Wait, what?” _

“Just trust me,” Fox told her. Then to Locus and Siris, she said “I’m going to have her prepare to purge her vents. So here’s the plan; we get whoever’s in that power armor away from the hud and onto the vents around it. If we can get her to surrender or disarm her somehow, that’ll be it, but if not, I’ll have Marz shoot her into the atmosphere.”

“You  _ do _ realize how much power armor weighs, don’t you?” Siris asked.

“Yes, and believe me when I say that her vents are strong enough to blast that jackass into near-space,” Fox replied. “So don’t be on them when I tell her to exhale, got it?”

“How are we going to approach the target?” Locus asked.

“You two walk around and take them from either side. I’ll approach from the front and draw their attention. When they’re occupied with me, you two jump them, got it?”

“That could be risky,” Locus said.

“I’ll tell them who I am so they won’t shoot, how’s that?” Fox replied.

“How are we going to know where they are?” Siris asked.

Fox held up a finger, then to Marz, said “can you lead these two to a good spot to ambush our new friend?”

_ “Sure thing,”  _ Marz replied.

“And I’m still waiting on you to take a breath.”

_ “Fine, fine.” _ There was a sudden sound like a thousand vacuums being turned on at once, and all of the lights in the round hallway flickered.  _ “There you go.” _

“Perfect,” Fox said, then looked back at Locus and Siris. “We good?”

Locus nodded.

“Be careful,” Siris said.

“You too,” Fox replied.  _ “Both _ of you.” Then she turned and started down the hall until she reached the first break in the wall. She stepped through and wove through the server towers until her feet found the ventilation grates. Taking a deep breath, she looked up at the giant spherical structure with tubes sticking out of it at every angle that hung suspended in the air halfway between the floor and ceiling. Behind it, through the warping of the plexiglass tubes, Fox could make out a figure in white and grey power armor standing at the computer station that connected to the structure. She stood there a moment until she heard both Siris and Locus confirm over comms that they were in position, then she took another deep breath and called out “you know, if you’re looking for a new computer, there’s a Best Buy down the street!”

The figure jumped, and Fox heard the unmistakable sound of someone flipping the safety off of a gun. She watched as the figure stepped out from behind the hud, weapon raised.

Fox put her hands up, a grin on her face, “well now, that’s no way to make new friends, now is it?”

“Who are you?” the figure demanded in a feminine voice, stepping forward onto the grate towards her. 

“Pepper Matsukaze. Vice President of Emblem and next in line to the throne,” Fox replied. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Siris slinking through the ring of server towers to her right. 

The other woman lowered her weapon, but only slightly. “Where are your security guards? There’s no way you came up here alone.”

Fox shrugged. “Oh... they’re  _ around.” _

_ “Get ready,” _ Marz said in her ear.

“You have a radio,” the woman said, nodding at Fox’s comm, “tell them to come out with their hands up.”

Fox sighed.  _ “Alright, _ just don’t shoot.” She reached up and pressed the button on her earpiece and said, “alright kids, gig is up. You heard the lady.” Fox pulled her hand away from her ear, praying that Marz had relayed some sort of message to Locus and Siris telling them to stay put. It wasn’t until she saw a movement to her right and saw the woman turn her head towards it that she realized she needed to stall,  _ fast. _ “So, you got a name?” Fox asked, drawing the woman’s attention.

“Why does it matter?”

Fox shrugged. “Because you’re in the heart of one of the most secure facilities in the city. I’d  _ like _ to know who I’m speaking to, if it’s all the same to you.”

The woman was silent for a moment, and Fox found herself staring at her reflection in her silvery visor. “Snow,” she said. “Call me Snow.” She raised her gun again, taking aim at Fox’s head. “Now where are your friends?”

“Right here!”

Fox looked over to where the voice had come from, and saw Siris standing several feet away from her with his pistol aimed at Snow’s head. Looking to her left, she saw that Locus was doing the same. 

“Apparently your friends don’t care very much about your wellbeing,  _ Pepper,” _ Snow growled. “Because if they did,” she cocked her gun and held it steady, “they would have _ listened _ to you.” Fox watched her finger go to the trigger, but Siris beat her to it, sending a bullet ricocheting off of her helmet. Snow immediately whirled and open fired at him, forcing him to scramble for cover. 

Fox darted behind one of the server towers, kicking herself mentally for not bringing some sort of weapon as she listened to the sound of gunfire echoing through the chamber. She watched as Locus returned fire, then ducked behind the server tower next to hers when Snow forced him back. 

Fox met his gaze and asked, “where’s Siris?”

Locus just shook his head.

“Dead?”

“I don’t know.”

“Out- _ standing,” _ Fox hissed, leaning out slightly from behind the tower to try to get a glimpse of what was going on. What she saw made her heart sink. Snow was standing over Siris, who was, thankfully, very much alive, but on the floor with his hands up defensively and no weapon in sight. “Shit,” Fox said, leaning back and looking over at Locus.

“I see it,” he said, eyes narrowed as he looked out in Siris’ direction.

Fox thought for a minute, then rose out of her crouch and said. “I have an idea, but you’re not going to like it.”

Locus glanced over at her, but said nothing. 

“Sound travels between this floor and level two because of those tubes connecting to the hub. By now, Mills and his men know that shit’s going down up here,” Fox said. “This chick doesn’t strike me as stupid, so she probably knows that we’ve gotten  _ someone _ with more firepower than the three of us and her combined involved. If I can convince her that her time is running out, and that she needs me to expedite whatever she’s trying to do to Marz, I might be able to get Siris out of there.”

“You’re  _ not _ going out there,” Locus said, fixing her in a hard look.

“And  _ you _ are? She’ll drop you the second you step out from behind that server tower and we both know it,” Fox replied. Then she took a deep breath and said, “I need you to trust me, okay. I can make this work.”

“Miss Matsukaze, I believe I have something of yours,” Snow called out.

Fox glanced back in the direction of her voice, saying, “so much for having to convince her of anything.” Then she turned and gave Locus a pointed look. “I’m gonna need your gun. For leverage.”

“Leverage?” Locus echoed.

“Yeah, she has something I want, and I’ve got something she probably wants,” Fox explained. “I can-”

“I’m losing  _ patience,” _ Snow called out. 

Fox bit her lip, then calmly said, “look, just give me the fucking gun. You can yell at me for being stupid later.”

Locus met her gaze evenly, and Fox got a sense that he was trying to figure out what was going on in her head, then he wordlessly handed her the gun. 

“Thank you,” Fox said, then added, “be ready to grab Siris if necessary. I might not be able to get him off of the vents alone if things get ugly.”

“Understood,” Locus replied. 

Fox nodded, then to Marz, said “open the vent doors. Alert levels one and two. Get ready for my signal.”

_ “Copy that,” _ Marz replied. 

“Get ready,” Fox said to Locus, then stepped out from behind the server tower, gun raised. As she did so, there was a humming sound from above that barely stood out over the white noise around them, and when she glanced up, she could see the massive aperture in the ceiling begin to slide open to reveal the blackness of the chute above.

Snow was standing on the vents with Siris in a headlock and a gun to his head. A bruise was starting to form on his cheekbone. “About time,” Snow crowed. 

“Doctors appointments must be a  _ bitch _ for you, being as impatient as you are,” Fox replied, stopping short of the vents. She nodded at Siris, “so what do you want?”

“You’re smarter than the average bear, aren’t you?” Snow asked, then said “you’re the V-P of this company. You have access to the database?”

“I sure do,” Fox replied with a grin. 

Snow nodded at her. “You get me what I want, and he lives.”

“Wow, you’re not even gonna butter it up a bit?” Fox asked flatly. “Jesus, you must be new to this supervillain stuff.”

Siris gave her a look that screamed “are you  _ serious?” _ and struggled slightly. 

Fox relaxed a little now that she had Snow right where she wanted her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Locus moving behind the server towers to her right, and prayed that Snow hadn’t noticed. “Y’know, I gotta say, I’m not a fan of those terms.” She straightened up out of the stance she had taken, and waved the gun lazily. “I mean, you could just shoot him after I get you what you want,” she said, gesturing with her free hand at Siris. Then she allowed a cold smile to spread across her face, “so I’ve got a deal for  _ you. _ You’re not walking out of here with what you came for, and that is a fact. But maybe you can take another shot at it later, when the odds aren’t so stacked against you. Maybe when I’m alone out grocery shopping you could nab me and force me to access the database for you. But right now, you’re gonna let him go, or lose your shot for good,” Fox said, allowing her voice to curl into a snarl as she pressed the muzzle of the gun against her temple.

“Whoah, whoah,  _ hey!” _ Siris snapped, struggling against Snow’s grip.

“You’re going to kill yourself?” Snow asked incredulously, “for  _ him?” _

Fox shrugged. “He’s a nice guy. Doesn’t deserve to go out like this.” Then she fixed Snow in a hard gaze. “What’s it gonna be? You gonna let him go?”

“You think I’m stupid enough to fall for a  _ bluff?!” _ Snow exclaimed, pressing her gun hard against the side of Siris’ head. 

“I don’t think you’re stupid at all,” Fox replied. “Which is why I believe you’ll know that I’m not  _ fucking _ playing.” She held Snow’s gaze as she flipped off the safety. 

“You’re not going to pull that trigger.”

“You can’t take that risk. Carson is unobtainable. I’m the only shot you’ve got,” Fox growled. “Whoever sent you is  _ already _ going to be pissed that you failed. You’re not going to throw away the only second chance you’ve got, and  _ I’m _ not letting you kill him. Now stand  _ down.” _

A movement several feet behind where Snow was holding Siris drew Fox’s eye, and she noticed that Locus had managed to creep onto the solid floor in the center of the room around the hub, and was poised to strike. 

_ Good, _ Fox thought, then she said, “let. Him.  _ Go.” _

And Snow held her gaze evenly for a moment, then gave Siris a hard shove away from her. He stumbled, but before he could fall, Locus sprang forward and grabbed his arm and yanked him back onto solid ground. Snow took notice of this, and turned with her gun partially raised, but stopped when Fox called her name.

She turned back towards Fox, who stepped back, dropped into a crouch, gave her a triumphant smirk, and said “exhale.”

And the room was enveloped in a deafening shriek as air was pushed out through the vents with blinding speed. Fox heard Snow let out a yell of shock, and watched as she was shot towards the ceiling, into the blackness of the chute. The aperture in the ceiling closed, and then everything went still. 

Fox stayed crouched for a moment, eyes on the floor, and took a deep breath. She looked over at Locus and Siris, who were huddled against the hub. Both of them were staring at her. “Are you guys okay?” she asked.

“What. The hell. Was that?” Siris breathed, slowly unwinding himself from his position against the hub.

_ “That _ is how we get dust out of our system,” Fox replied, rising to her feet.

“Where does it go?” Locus asked, doing the same.

“That ceiling thingy leads to a sort of...cannon, I guess?” Fox replied, nodding up at the aperture. “Which then shoots all of the dust into the atmosphere for it to be burned up.”

“So, she’s probably dead, then,” Siris said, raising himself up onto shaky legs and dusting himself off. 

“Nah, she’s got power armor on,” Fox replied. “She’s probably fine. And if she’s  _ not, _ then it can be chalked up to her poor decision-making skills.”

“Ah,” Siris said, and fell silent.

The three of them stood listening to the white noise of the room for a moment, recovering from what had just transpired. Then Siris spoke up again, saying “that was stupid.”

“What was?” Fox asked.

“You holding a gun to your head for me,” Siris replied, fixing her in a hard look. “You could have died.”

Fox shrugged. “I knew the leverage would work. Sure it was dangerous, but so is everything else we’re going to be doing.” She straightened up slightly and looked over at Siris before adding “it’s my job to keep you guys alive, and vice-versa. But if it makes you feel any better, I don’t plan on dying any time soon. There is  _ way _ too much food I haven’t tried yet.”

Locus gave her an odd look, but said nothing. 

“Good,” Siris replied, a little firmly.

Fox gave him a nod, then looked at the gun in her hand. She flipped the safety back on and held it up, looking pointedly at Locus. He walked over and took it from her, holstering it, and Fox said “we should probably head back down. Mills and Carson will wanna know what happened, and Kimball’s probably on the edge of her seat waiting for our report.”

“Copy that,” Siris sighed, rubbing the back of his neck, his face screwed up in pain.

“Alright, let’s go,” Fox said, turning, and headed back towards the elevator.

 

\---

 

“Well, I’ve got good news and bad news,” Grizzly said, leaning back in the chair and watching the holographic array of camera feeds in front of him. 

“Don’t tell me the credentials Fox put on your phone didn’t work,” Jersey’s voice replied over comms.

“No, no. I got in. It took a bit of negotiating though. I guess I don’t look like an I-T guy,” Grizzly said, the corners of his mouth curling up in a small amused smile. 

“So what’s up?” Rocket’s voice asked.

“Well, the good news is that I’m picking up Fox, Locus, and Siris’ comm signals again, which means that they’re probably still alive,” Grizzly responded. “And the bad news is that these feeds were all tampered with.”

“What, like the security feeds? You can’t get anything out of them?” Jersey asked.

“Nope. Data’s all scrambled,” Grizzly replied, staring at the static across the array.

“Shit,” Jersey hissed.

“I’m gonna download it anyways and see if maybe Fox and Marz can take a look at it later,” Grizzly said.

“I’m gonna reach out to the boss and see if she has an update for us. It’s been a while,” Rocket said suddenly.

“Good idea,” Grizzly replied, pulling the data chip out of his pocket and inserting it into a port on the computer. He quickly collected all of the feeds and downloaded them, pulling his eyes away from the array when he heard Fox’s voice over comms.

“This is Commander Fox. Can everyone hear me?”

“Loud and clear,” came Jersey’s voice over the channel.

“Likewise,” Grizzly replied. “How you holding up, boss?”

“We’re alive. A little bruised and battered, but nothing serious,” Fox replied quickly. “I don’t have a lot of time, so I’m going to make this quick. We were infiltrated by some sort of mercenary. We don’t know who her employer is, only that she goes by Snow.”

“That explains the influx of cop cars me and Jersey are looking at,” Rocket commented.

“Grizzly, she was dressed in white power armor with grey markings and a Raiden helmet. She wouldn’t have slipped past security easily,” Fox said.

“Yeah, that’s the thing, boss,” Grizzly began, scratching his head. “Your merc took down the security feed before she got into the building. Or... _ something. _ The cam’s are all messed up. I can’t see anything.”

Fox was quiet on the other end of the line for a moment, and then she said “Marz would have detected level one security going down. Everything I’ve seen and heard implies that this came from nowhere. Have you downloaded the data?”

“Working on it,” Grizzly replied, looking at the loading bar that was almost complete.

“Good. I’ll try to unscramble it later,” Fox said.

“Security’s too high for them to have been taken down remotely,” Locus said over comms.

“That’s what I was thinking,” Fox said. 

“You’re thinking there was another person involved on the inside?” Jersey asked.

“Makes sense,” Grizzly replied. “Rocket? You see any shady people walk out of the building by chance?”

“No. And I didn’t pick up any weird frequencies either,” Rocket replied, sounding a little downtrodden. 

“That’s fine,” Fox sighed. “We all did our best. The immediate threat is over, and that’s what matters most right now. We’ll take a look and see if we can salvage any footage from the data you downloaded, Grizzly, and go from there.”

“What’s the play now, boss?” Jersey asked.

“Hold your positions until we leave Emblem, then rendezvous at the warehouse,” Fox replied. “Good work, everyone.” 

 

* * *

 

“So, tough first day on the job, huh?”

Locus looked over when Abigale spoke up from behind her desk. 

After their confrontation with Snow, Fox had delivered the news of what had happened to both Mills and Stephen, and after confirming with the latter that he and his team could take it from there, led them back down to Carson’s office. Mills had insisted on letting one of his men take a look at Siris, who had wound up prescribing him a bag of ice for his head and some rest. Siris now sat next to the fish tank in the corner of the room with said bag of ice wrapped in a wad of paper towels with his eyes closed. Fox had disappeared into Carson’s office, leaving the two of them alone with Abigale. 

“You could say that,” Locus replied.

“Mmm,” Abigale said, taking a sip of what looked like some sort of tea. She glanced over at Siris, then set her mug down and said “Pep told me she met you on that moon. Nah-lo-mé, right?” 

Locus stared at her, tense, trying to figure out how on earth she knew that. 

Abigale seemed to notice his confusion, and added “I’m the only other person she kept in contact with outside of General Sachs and Sanchez.”

And Locus suddenly remembered that Fox had mentioned she had  _ three _ contacts on Earth. He glanced at the doors to Carson’s office, then quietly said “this isn’t a conversation we should be having here.”

Abigale waved her hand at him absently.  _ “Pssh, _ no one can hear us. This room is soundproof, and Marz knows when to keep her mouth shut.”

Locus stole another look at the doors to Carson’s office, then said “yes, I met Fox on  _ Nalome.” _

“Oh, it’s ‘Na-LO-me,” Abigale said, repeating the way he said it. “I thought it was like a Latin or Spanish thing. Y’know, where they pronounce every vowel?”

Locus was certain she made that rule up, but chose to ignore it, asking “what are you trying to figure out?” There was no reason for her to bring any of this up unless she was trying to gain something from it. 

Abigale smiled at him, but narrowed her eyes, leaning back in her chair. “Straightforward and to the point, huh? No wonder Pep likes you.” She reached out and adjusted her mousepad. “I’m not trying to get anything out of this. I’m not like Pepper. I don’t use information the same way as her.” She looked back at him. “You’re the new guy, and she’s my friend, so I wanna find out a bit about you,” she said, then added “personality-wise, anyways. I already looked through your file.”

_ Of course you did, _ Locus thought bitterly, looking away. 

“Hey, I’m no judge,” Abigale said, “and it’s not like you were the one hiring people  _ like _ you to start a civil war.”

“Is this really a necessary conversation?” Locus asked quickly, hating how tight his voice sounded. 

Abigale stared at him with her eyebrows raised for a moment, then said “alright, subject change. You pick the topic.”

Locus gave her a tired, unamused look, really just wishing he didn’t have to engage with her at all. He looked back at Siris, who was still beside the fish tank with his eyes closed. Realizing he was backed into a corner, he let out a sigh and decided he might as well use this moment to his advantage. “What can you tell me about Fox?”

“Call her ‘Pepper’ while we’re here,” Abigale corrected, then said “and I know a fair amount about her. Why?” The corners of her mouth twitched upwards into a smile. “Trying to get all the dirt on your new boss?”

Locus gave her an annoyed look.

“Wow, okay, tough guy. Lighten up a little,” Abigale said, but appeared unfazed. She tapped her pen against her cheek. “Pepper’s a real business type. Likes to get shit done. Also a bit of a loner. She doesn’t really have many friends here.”

“You aren’t her friend?”

“No, I am. But I’m pretty much the only one she’s got here. Carson’s more like an adoptive granddad if anything to her. She’s like the grandkid he always wished he had.”

“He doesn’t have any of his own?”

“Nah, he does. But like, she’s smarter than all of them.”

“Why isn’t he giving the company to one of his next-of-kin, then?” Locus asked, a little confused. Smart or not, grandkids meant that Carson had children. It seemed odd that he wouldn’t put them first. 

Abigale glanced around, then leaned forward and said in a low voice, “he was gonna give it over to his oldest son, but then all his kids wound up fighting over it, so he said ‘fuck em’. Also he was always going to give the company to Pepper’s father, so when he died, I think he probably felt like he owed some sort of debt. But you didn’t hear it from me.”

_ Fair enough, _ Locus thought, then looked over, startled, when the doors to Carson’s office slid open. He watched quizzically as Fox and Carson walked out. 

Fox gave him a wave and said “we’re just going to get that retinal scan squared away, then we’ll be back to finish up. You two can sit tight, okay?”

Locus just nodded and watched them step out into the hall and walk away, then looked back at Abigale. “How much does Carson know?” he asked once the doors had slid shut.

“Next to nothing,” Abigale replied. “And if Pep is going to get the company, it should probably stay that way.”

Locus thought about that for a moment. A large part of their mission relied on Fox’s ability to access Marz’s database and use her position to convince others to back away from Hargrove. “Do you think she’ll be an effective leader?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Abigale replied. “She’s really smart. I guess a little reckless at times, obviously, since she went to work for Charon.”

_ Obviously, _ Locus thought, his mind going back to what had transpired during their encounter with Snow. 

“But she’s got good business sense, and she knows how to use information about people to get them to agree with or work with her,” Abigale continued.

_ No kidding, _ Locus thought, a little bitterly. “When is Carson stepping down?” he asked.

Abigale looked over at the doors Carson and Fox had left through. “Not sure. Pep just got back. And the whole process of handing over a company like this,  _ especially _ one tied to the U.N.S.C., involves a  _ lot _ of paperwork, and like a council meeting and a meeting with the rest of the Department of Defense and a load of other crap.”

“What sort of timeline are we looking at?”

Abigale eyed him. “You in some sort of rush here, pal?”

Locus opted not to say anything to fuel the fire.

Abigale held his gaze for a moment, then shrugged. “Honestly, I couldn’t say. A change like this has pretty much never happened since the birth of this company. But since Emblem plays such a huge role in the U.N.S.C., it’ll probably only take a few weeks for them to get everything transferred over and sorted out.”

Locus nodded absently, thinking. A few weeks wasn’t horrible. But it wasn’t great either. Once Fox’s retinal scan was approved, their schedule would become even more busy than it already was. There was a chance that they would have a period where they wouldn’t be able to accomplish as much while the U.N.S.C. when about approving Fox as the new CEO of Emblem. He wondered if Fox was aware of all of this, and whether or not she had planned for it.  _ Questions for later, _ he thought. 

“Well, this conversation has been fun, but I have a  _ ton _ of paperwork to fill out because of the mess that happened upstairs,” Abigale said with a sigh. She nodded over at Siris. “Your friend over there has the right idea. Grab a seat. Take a load off. You guys had a tough day. Pep and Carson should be back in a while, but in the meantime, you might as well get comfortable.”

Locus looked back at Siris, then gave Abigale a nod before starting in the direction of his teammate. Sitting around and doing nothing was frustrating, but Abigale was right, today  _ had _ been difficult. He took the seat across from Siris and allowed his gaze to wander over to the fish tank, reviewing everything he had learned in his head to commit it to memory. 

He glanced over when Siris shifted slightly, and realized that the other man was, in fact, asleep. He stood and gently removed the ice pack from Siris’ hand, setting it down on the side table next to the chair he was in, cringing slightly when he saw the bruise on the other man’s face.

Meg was going to kill him. 

 

\---

 

_ “Please stare straight ahead.” _

Fox listened to what the overhead voice said and stared into the black strip of glass in front of her. It felt strange for her to find herself back in what most of the employees referred to as “the photo booth.” After everything that had happened on Nalome, she never could have anticipated that she would live long enough to update her retinal scan.

Despite having experience with the process in the past, none of her memories of it were enough to prepare her for the blinding beams of light that shot suddenly from behind the glass straight into her eyes. It was a split-second struggle to try not to blink, and then it was over. 

_ “Retinal scan complete. Beginning light transition.” _

Fox blinked rapidly, rubbing at her eyes, thankful that the space she was in was sealed off from everyone else as she re-activated her facial mesh. She gazed around the slowly brightening room, flashes of light painted over her vision. There was a small bench built into the wall of the box, and she opted to sit down on it with her head in her hands while her vision cleared.

_ “That wasn’t so bad, right?” _ Marz asked in her ear.

“It was awful and now I’m blind,” Fox muttered.

_ “Only temporarily.” _

“Yeah, yeah,” Fox said, squeezing her eyes shut a moment, and opening them again, feeling with some relief that they weren’t nearly as watery as they had been seconds ago. 

It took a full two minutes for the lighting in the space to finally equate that of the room outside, and by then, Fox’s eyes had adjusted. 

_ “Light transition complete. Please contact a medical professional if you experience the following symptoms; nausea, flashes of light in your vision, blurry vision, or fainting. We thank you for your patience. Have a nice day!” _ the overhead voice chimed.

The wall to Fox’s right slid back, and she stood and stepped outside.

“Ah,” Carson said, shaking his head in amusement, “it never gets any easier, does it?” The security guard sitting a few feet away from him at a computer gave Fox a sympathetic look. 

“Yep,” Fox said, cringing, staring at the white-tiled floor. Looking around too much made her feel queasy. 

“Do you want to sit down?,” the security guard asked, standing and putting her hand on the chair she had just been seated in like she was about to roll it over to Fox.

Fox waved a hand at her. “No, no. I’m fine.”

“Just remember, if you go blind within the next twenty-four hours, call a doctor,” said the technician, leaning out from behind the thick, stainless steel box Fox had just stepped out of. “Also the retinal scans just went through. We should have them processed by the end of the day.”

“Perfect,” Carson said, looking over at Fox patiently.

“I’m ready,” Fox replied, nodding at him.

“Perfect,” Carson said, then to the technician, added “thank you, Bill,” before turning and heading towards the door.

Fox gave the security guard a nod on her way out behind him. 

Carson was silent for a good stretch of the route back to his office. A strange thing, considering that the man had always been rather talkative in all the years Fox had known him. As they drew closer to their destination, Fox stole a look at his face, noting what might have been a troubled expression on it. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

“Hm?” Carson asked, looking over at her in surprise. “Oh, no, my dear. I’m just thinking of all the paperwork and meetings I’m going to have to worry about for the next few days. The U.N.S.C. will what to know exactly what took place here, and I want to make sure I get all of that mess cleared up before you replace me in a few weeks.”

That was...sweet of him. Fox gave him a grateful smile. “You really don’t have to do that, you know. I’m sure I can handle it.”

“Yes, yes, and I believe you,” Carson replied. “But the people in charge in the U.N.S.C. will be looking for you to make a mistake so they can send one of their own in to replace you. You and I both know that. I’d rather not give them something to use against you. Starting you off with a clean slate is the best way to ensure that happens.”

Fox nodded, looking away down the hall. He was right about that. Ever since Emblem had merged with the U.N.S.C., the officials in charge had been pushing to put one of their own in Carson’s position. It had been a huge deal several years ago, when Carson had announced he would hand the company over to her. Fox was glad she hadn’t been on Earth when all of it had happened. The U.N.S.C. had always been a problem, but Fox wasn’t a pushover, and something in the back of her mind squirmed with apprehension knowing there would likely be plenty of times she’d need to prove that. And her stomach twisted with guilt as she processed just how much Carson was trying to do for her before he stepped down, ignorant of the lie she had woven. For a split second, she thought about telling him everything, but she choked it down and forced herself to focus on the topic at hand. “They’re going to try to make me look incompetent, aren’t they?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Carson replied. “Though I think they will find they’ll have a much harder time doing so than they’d expect.” He came to a stop in front of the tall doors that led to his and Abigale’s office and turned to face her. “You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, and you’ve grown into a very strong woman. However, I know this is a big change for you, and it likely won’t be smooth sailing from the start. I know you’ll be able to handle it, but I want you to know that I’ll always be ready to assist you should you need me to do so.”

“Aw, jeeze, Carson. Are you trying to make me cry?” Fox asked with a laugh.

“Not in the slightest,” Carson replied, reaching out and giving her shoulder an affectionate squeeze before turning and scanning his card to open the doors. 

“Well that took just short of forever,” Abigale remarked when they stepped into her office. Across from her, near the fish tank, Locus rose to his feet, looking over at Fox expectantly. 

“Is  Jiàng still alive over there?” Fox asked, nodding at Siris.

Locus reached over and tapped Siris on the shoulder, causing him to jerk awake and look around with an alarmed expression on his face before he realized where he was and relaxed. “Did I fall asleep?” he asked.

“That, or you went into a coma,” Abigale replied flatly without looking up from her computer. 

“Are you guys ready to go?” Fox asked.

“Are you finished?” Locus asked in return.

Fox looked over at Carson, who nodded. “We can take care of everything else,” he replied, then turned to Fox and said. “Of course, there is obviously some paperwork you’ll need to fill out, but I don’t want you worrying about that right now. Go home, get some rest, and come back tomorrow.”

“If you insist,” Fox replied, amused. 

Carson looked over to Locus and Siris, the latter of whom had risen to his feet and was in the process of straightening out his jacket. “I have to say, the two of you impressed me. Not bad for your first official day on the job. Normally, your days would be much longer, but for now, I want you to accompany Miss Matsukaze back to her apartment, then go home and get some rest yourselves. Especially you, Jiàng. By the looks of it, you could use a few days to recover. I’ll have someone take your place when Miss Matsukaze returns tomorrow.” He paused, then added “thank you both for your efforts. I look forward to seeing the two of you around for my remaining time at Emblem.” He gave both men a nod, then turned and walked back to his office. 

Fox waited until the doors to his office closed, then let out a long sigh, looking over at Locus and Siris, “alright,” she said, finally allowing her tiredness to creep into her voice, “why don’t we head home?”

 

* * *

 

Several miles from the Emblem skyscraper, Rick Jones was connecting his boat to the trailer hitch on his truck when a sound above him drew his attention. Shielding his eyes, he squinted upwards, only to throw himself to the ground with a yell as some  _ thing _ fell out of the sky and hit the water several meters from the tail of his boat. 

Rick stared at the spot in the water where the thing had impacted, watching as the massive ring of waves expanded out and lapped at the shore, rocking the boats tied up in the water across the river.  _ What in God’s name? _ He thought, rising to his feet and slowly walking to the edge of the water.

After a while of nothing happening, Rick began to fall under the impression that he had just witnessed a meteor strike the Earth. He glanced nervously up at the sky, silently praying it wouldn’t spit anything else out in his direction, then quickly finished connecting his boat. Once he was done, he hopped in the driver’s seat of his truck, and revved the engine, then froze when he glanced in his right side mirror. 

Dragging themselves out of the water was a Marine decked out in full power armor.

Rick watched as she looked up, noticed the truck, and rose unsteadily onto her feet. He turned and looked up the road, then back at the Marine.  _ Aw hell, _ he thought, then stepped out of his car and walked around the front of it, stopping on the other side of it. “Hey, you need help?” he asked. He wasn’t sure what she was involved in, but she was obviously a Marine, and she was obviously hurt.

The Marine stared at him, appearing startled, like she hadn’t realized he was there. Then she rattled out, in a pained voice “I need a ride.”

Rick realized that she was probably hurt way worse than she looked. “Yeah, sure thing, miss,” he replied slowly. “You just hop in the bed of my truck, alright?”

The Marine nodded, and Rick watched as she limped over to his truck and climbed over the side of it, dragging herself into the bed. He turned and walked back to the driver’s side and hopped in. “You want me to take you to a hospital?” he shouted back through the open window behind his seat.

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Then where am I takin’ you?” Rick asked, a little worried that maybe the Marine wasn’t thinking straight. She  _ had _ fallen several hundred feet, after all. 

“I have an address,” the Marine replied. 

And Rick pulled to the side of the road and punched it into his windshield-mounted GPS as she told it to him. He waited for the GPS to pick up a satellite signal, letting out a whistling breath. He pulled back onto the road, digging his cell phone out of his pocket and calling his wife. “Hey Kate. Yeah, yeah I’m okay. Hey, listen,” he said, eyeing the Marine through the rearview mirror, “something went wrong with the ah...boat, and I’m not gonna be home until late…... Yeah... Yeah... Something with the engine... I don’t know. I’m gonna take it to the shop, see what the guy tells me….Yeah, I know...Look, tell Travis that I’ll read to him for the next two nights to make up for it....Alright. Great. See you soon. Love you.”

Rick hung up with a sigh and shoved his phone back in his pocket, looking back through the rearview mirror at the Marine. “Name’s Rick, by the way. We’ve got about a two hour drive together, so why don’t you tell me your name?”

The Marine tilted her head at him, and seemed to size him up, then said, “Snow. My name is Snow.”

 

* * *

 

The orange glow of the fire cut beams of light between the shadows of the pine trees as Snow made her way uphill towards her destination. Looking back, she could barely make out the shape of the truck through the trees and smoke. Finding someone willing to help after being shot out of the top of the Emblem building and falling thousands of feet back to the surface had been lucky. The fact that she had survived at all to  _ need _ help was even more so.  _ How _ she hadn’t been killed by the fall was beyond her, and as she continued her climb up the hill, decided it wasn’t worth dwelling on.

She had broken through the rear window of the truck and snapped Rick’s neck about five miles from where she had landed her Condor. She would have had him go closer, but she wasn’t sure if she would be able to move her ship tonight, especially in her current condition. She couldn’t risk the authorities finding her.

The trek back to her Condor was long and exhausting. Her leg gave out several times, and she wound up having to cling to the surrounding trees for support as she moved forward for the last half mile. Finally, the forest gave way to the small clearing where she had made camp, and she more or less dragged herself into the Condor. 

It took her about an hour to tend to all of her wounds. When she finally finished, she reached out to Control, a feeling of dread settling in her stomach. She was already off to a poor start. 

“Ah, Miss Snow, what do you have for me?” came Hargrove’s voice.

Snow’s shoulders sank slightly. “The mission...was an unfortunate failure,” she said, painfully rasping out each word. “Emblem was... able to stop the h-hack...Matsukaze used the system’s...ven-ventilation systems...to  _ remove _ me from...from the premise...” She broke off coughing, pain spiking into her lungs and making her eyes water.

Hargrove was silent for a very long time before he said, “do you remember what I told you prior to your departure from my ship?”

“Yes sir,” Snow gritted out.

“Good.” Hargrove fell silent again for a much shorter period of time before he said “perhaps this isn’t a total failure. Miss Matsukaze refused our  _ ‘help’ _ prior to this mission. Now that it’s been proven that her system isn’t as impenetrable as she thought, she  _ may _ turn to us.”

“What if she doesn’t?” Snow asked. 

“Then we will take more extreme measures. However, regardless of what needs to be done, you are  _ not _ to link any of this back to my company. If we are going to succeed, we’ll need her alliance,” Hargrove replied.

“Understood,” Snow rasped. 

“As for right now, you’re to return to the base of operations I had my associates prepare for you. Medical assistance will be provided to you upon your arrival.”

Snow nodded, and began reaching for the button to end the transmission.

“And Miss Snow?”

Snow paused, her finger hovering above the button.

“I would advise you practice stronger precaution in the near future. You don’t want to end up like your little friend, do you?”

Under her helmet, Snow bit down on her tongue, then replied “no sir.”

“Very good,” Hargrove said. “I’ll be in touch.”

Snow hit the button to end the transmission, then sat back with her arms wrapped around her midsection, her mind floating to the figure in the tube in Marlowe’s lab. With a sigh, she looked out of the open rear hatch of the Condor, watching the stars flicker overhead for a moment before she stood, and made her way to the cockpit. 

Hargrove was right, she  _ didn’t _ want to end up like her friend. And the best way to prevent that was to head back to base, get treated, and gear up for her next assignment. If what came next was anything like this last mission, she would need to be prepared.

 

* * *

 

Marlowe was in the middle of inserting an energy core into a cybernetic arm prototype when Hargrove walked into his lab. “Oh heavens,  _ that’s _ not a happy look on your face,” he said, setting the core down on the workbench. “I’m guessing our new mercenary friend had a tough time today.”

“She was outsmarted by a woman with no combat experience,” Hargrove replied. 

“Oh dear, how so?” Marlowe asked.

“Apparently, she was ejected out of the Emblem building through it’s ventilation system, resulting in major injury to her person,” Hargrove said.

“We’re not talking about the legendary ventilation system rumored to be capable of launching a tank into space with sheer wind force alone, are we?” Marlowe asked, raising his eyebrows at Hargrove.

“It would seem so,” Hargrove said dryly, looking away from him in the direction of the orange gel-filled tube in the back of the room. “What’s his condition?”

“As good as it’s going to get,” Marlowe replied, pulling off his gloves and tossing them down next to the energy core. He turned and gestured for Hargrove to follow him over to the tube. “As of right now, he can survive outside of this tube.”

“For how long?” Hargrove asked. 

“As long as he needs to,” Marlowe replied. 

Hargrove peered into the tube, realizing he was unable to make out a human form inside of it. “Where is he?”

“I moved up our schedule to begin attaching our working models to him today,” Marlowe replied, looking over at Hargrove. “I thought I sent you a head’s up about that, but maybe it didn’t go through.”

“Perhaps,” Hargrove said, turning to Marlowe. “How soon until the procedure is finished?”

“Oh! We  _ already _ finished!” Marlowe replied with a laugh. “He’s in recovery right now. Attaching cybernetics as  _ advanced _ as the ones we built takes a  _ lot _ out of the person receiving them.”

And a small, interested smile appeared on Hargrove’s face. “I want to see him.”

And Marlowe’s excitement faded slightly. “Ah, well, he...hasn’t been exactly...in the best mood, since we finished. Though I suppose enduring eight hours straight of being cut open and pulled apart will do that to a person.”

“I can handle belligerence, Doctor,” Hargrove said flatly. “It’s  _ failure _ that irks me. You’re not hiding anything, are you?”

Marlowe forced a grin onto his face despite the threat. “No I am not.” He turned and led Hargrove out of the lab and towards the medical wing, chattering on about their latest advancements in their project. When they reached the medical wing, Marlowe stepped back to allow Hargrove through the door first before he followed him in. 

A smile forming on his face, Marlowe led Hargrove to the section of the wing where they kept their recovering patients, stopping in front of a closed door. “After you,” he said with a grin, watching Hargrove step through before he followed him. Immediately, he was hit with the smell of antiseptics and latex.

“Chairman, Doctor Marlowe,” said Marlowe’s assistant, who was standing at the end of the hospital bed with a datapad in her hand.

“Hello Doctor Reed,” Marlowe greeted as he walked over to stand beside her. “How’s our good friend doing?”

“We managed to decrease his pain levels significantly now that the synchronization is complete. And he’s fully stabilized. The cybernetics you designed worked out quite nicely,” Reed replied, glancing over at Hargrove.

“Wonderful,” Marlowe said softly, looking down at the patient.

The man lay still with a sweat beaded on his brow and the color drained from his skin. Despite this, his chest rose and fell in a stable rhythm, and all the readings on the EKG machine next to the bed were nominal. 

“Well, Doctor, I’m waiting to hear your report,” Hargrove said.

Reed handed Marlowe the datapad, and he took it and adjusted his glasses before looking back at the patient. “Well, as you can see, everything from the sternum down is largely carbon fiber or other synthetically developed materials, since that’s approximately where the damage that ultimately resulted in paralysis originated. His arm was also replaced for the sake of experimentation. Needless to say, the cybernetic has been fitted, and accepted by his nervous system quite nicely.” 

“How many of his internal organs were replaced?” Hargrove asked.

“Only the ones that we needed to prior to placing him in that tube,” Marlowe replied. 

Hargrove looked over at him. “How did the synthetic skeleton you fitted him with respond to the prosthetics?”

“Very well,” Marlowe said, scrolling through the information on the datapad. “There were very minimal complications. Just as I predicted, it accepted the cybernetics with little trouble.”

“Good,” Hargrove said, looking back at the patient. He was silent for a moment before he asked, “is he conscious?”

“I can hear...every word…you say...you sonuvabitch…” came the weak, hoarse reply from the man on the bed.

An amused smile appeared on Hargrove’s face. “I take it the state of his voice is from--”

“--The screaming, yes,” Marlowe replied, looking down at the patient with a frown. “Quite a set of lungs on this one, I must say.”

“I’d say it was unfortunate that you were unable to put him under during the procedure due to augmentations you outfitted him with prior to,” Hargrove began, “however, considering what he cost me, I believe it’s a fair trade.”

“Why won’t you...just let me...die?” the man rasped.

“Because after all of the resources I wasted on you, just for you and your little army of pirates to fail, I think it’s time I get my money’s worth,” Hargrove replied. Then he turned to Marlowe and said. “See to it that he’s on his feet quickly, and prepare several copies of those cybernetics.” He turned and started out of the room, saying “we’re going to conduct a little  _ test  _ on Chorus.”

 

* * *

 

There were about two million things Donut could have expected to witness during his daily wine and cheese hour with Doc. Simmons storming in, pouring himself a glass of wine, and shotgunning it, was  _ not  _ one of those things. “Tough day on the job?” he asked as Simmons plopped himself down at their table with a sigh.

“You have no  _ fucking _ idea,” Simmons replied.

“Does it have to do with the whole Emblem breach thing Grey told me about?” Doc asked.

“Yup,” Simmons said.

“Didn’t Fox and Locus take care of that though?” Donut asked.

“They  _ did, _ but it doesn’t matter! Fox and Grey both think that Charon got a hold of some of the kill code they used on CORA and Hargrove’s ship,” Simmons groaned, folding his arms flat on the table and resting his head on them. 

Donut blinked slowly. “That’s like...really bad, right?”

Simmons just shrugged. “I was there when Fox gave her report to Kimball. She doesn’t seem to think that it’s a big deal. Said that the program will adapt to defend itself.”

“And do you trust her?” Doc asked.

“I don’t know,” Simmons said quietly, sitting up. “I feel like she should be more worried than she is.”

Doc shrugged. “I dunno. In the time I had to get to know her, she seemed to be able to keep a level head through most  _ anything.” _

“And she’s kinda smarter than all the rest of us, except maybe Doctor Grey,” Donut added.

“True,” Simmons said, looking over at the wall absently. 

He was silent for a while, and Donut couldn’t help but feel a little worried. He took a sip of his wine, exchanging a look with Doc, then set his glass down on the table and said to Simmons “well, at least it’s over now, right?”

Simmons looked over at him tiredly. “Yeah.”

“Well gee, you don’t have to sound so glum!” Donut exclaimed. “Cheer up! Have some cheese!”

“I’m lactose intolerant,” Simmons reminded him flatly.

_ “Don’t  _ have any cheese!” Donut replied.

“So what has you so upset?” Doc asked, sounding more like he was doing so more out of a feeling of obligation than concern for Simmons.

Simmons shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Uh-huh,” Doc said, popping a cheese cube in his mouth without looking away from Simmons. 

“Does it have to do with your crush on Grif?” Donut asked.

Simmons went stock-stiff and turned to glare at him, his face turning almost as red as his armor. “Wh-what? I don’t-- That doesn’t--”

Donut made a “calm down” gesture with his hand and said, “I wasn’t trying to stir the pot. Just trying to figure out what has you all glum.”

Simmons pursed his lips and puffed out his cheeks in his best impression of a puffer fish, before releasing the breath he had been holding and the tension in his body, slouching and looking away. “It’s not  _ Grif,” _ he muttered.

“That’s a first,” Doc retorted, earning him a half-hearted glare from Simmons. 

“I’m just...It’s so  _ quiet _ around here!” Simmons said, looking over at Donut. “I mean, you  _ have _ to feel it too.”

Donut frowned and looked towards the ceiling in thought, then shrugged back at Simmons. “I mean,  _ yeah. _ There hasn’t been a lot that’s happened since Fox and Locus left. But isn’t that a good thing? I mean, we can get back to our own shenanigans like we used to!”

Simmons shook his head. “No, it’s...it’s a different kind of quiet.”

“Like everyone’s holding their breath,” Doc said, reaching over and picking up another cheese cube and popping it into his mouth.

Donut looked over at him in surprise, asking, “what do you mean?”

Doc held up a finger, finished chewing, swallowed, then replied, “Doctor Grey has been really, really quiet since Fox left. Like,  _ really _ quiet.”

“Well, you said that her and Fox really clicked, right?” Donut said, trying to piece together what Doc could be trying to get at. “Maybe she’s just sad.”

“Maybe,” Doc said. “I haven’t really asked her. She’s kind of just been locking herself away in that lab whenever she doesn’t have something to do in the medical bay.”

“Well maybe--” Donut cut off, thinking really hard about what he wanted to say. “Maybe everyone’s just worried about what Fox and Locus are gonna do on Earth. I mean, they only just got there, so we haven’t seen a whole lot of results. I think people are just hoping that it turns out to be a good thing that Kimball did, sending them there and all.”

And Simmons bit the inside of his lip and stared at the table. “I think that’s it,” he said slowly. “I think...even though we  _ all _ agreed that sending them to Earth was a good idea, that maybe some of the other people around here are thinking it wasn’t a good call.”

Doc took a sip of his wine. “Maybe,” he said. “All I know is that the climate around here is set to change--  _ is _ changing. With Fox and Locus getting Charon off our backs, the people around here are going to look to rebuild stuff. They’re gonna need some kind of government.”

Simmons pulled a grimace. “Yeah...yeah…”

“Oh good,  _ politics,” _ Donut moaned. “I  _ sucked _ at social studies when I was in school.”

“That’s a lot to think about,” Simmons said, looking over at Doc. Then he fell silent, staring at the rest of the empty mess hall.   
Donut, not liking the silence _or_ the current conversation topic, decided to change it. “So...Grif...”

Simmons squeezed his eyes shut like his was anticipating Donut adding something else to his interjection. But when nothing else came, he opened his eyes and looked over at Donut, frowning at him. “I don’t know what you’re trying to get out of me,” he admitted.

Donut shrugged. “Look, if you’re gonna make a move on the guy, and you  _ should, _ because there isn’t enough romance around here, just know I’m here to help you out!”

Simmons gave him a blank look. “Wait...are you...are you offering to set me up?”

“Do you want me to?” Donut asked, raising his eyebrows at Simmons.

Simmons pursed his lips. “N-no? I-- No. No I don’t.”

Donut leaned back, a little disappointed. “Suit yourself.”

Simmons tapped his fingers against the table, desperately looking like he wanted to bolt. He was silent for a moment, then, much to Donut’s surprise, asked “so...h-how did you two...wind up...together?”

Doc smiled as he took a sip of his wine, and side-eyed Donut.

“Uh...well…” Donut shrugged, feeling a bit of heat rise into his cheeks. “I don’t really remember. I just thought he was cute, so I invited him to wine and cheese hour, and then it sort of became our thing, and then I guess one day we just decided we were dating.”

Simmons looked disappointed. “That’s it?”

“Well what were you expecting? Doves and rose petals?” Doc asked.

“No there were definitely rose petals,” Donut said. “But like a little later when you guys were all out yelling at the Blues and we had the base to ourselves, if you get what I mean.”

“Y’know I probably could’ve lived without having that image in my mind, thanks,” Simmons said flatly.

Donut shrugged. “My  _ point _ is that if you’re  _ gonna _ go for it, you don’t have to make it all dramatic.”

“Donut, you’re  _ literally _ one of the most dramatic people on our team,” Simmons said, crossing his arms and squinting at Donut.

“Second only to you,” Doc added.

Simmons glared at him. 

“Look, all I’m _saying_ is that you and Grif should totally sit down and figure out if you want the two of you to be a thing or not,” Donut suggested.   
“Yeah, but how do I know if he even likes me? What if he says no and gets weirded out about all of it and just stops talking to me?” Simmons replied.

“He won’t get weirded out. This is  _ Grif _ we’re talking about,” Donut soothed.

“Plus, he literally had a big chunk of your skin grafted onto his ass,” Doc reminded. 

Simmons buried his face in one of his hands.  _ “God.” _ He looked up, letting his hand slide off his face and fall into his lap. “That didn’t answer a  _ single _ one of my questions.”

Donut rolled his eyes. “Jeeze. Look, dude, the guy _does_ like you. But again, it’s _Grif._ _When_ has he been good at talking about his emotions?”

Simmons rubbed the back of his head and looked away. “Yeah. Okay…”

“So are you gonna  _ try _ to sit down with him?” Donut asked slyly.

Simmons made a face. “I don’t know.”

“Aw, c’mon, Simmons! Just give it a shot!” Donut exclaimed. Then he leaned in and batted his eyelashes and added “please? Pretty please? For me?”

Simmons held his gaze, looking unconvinced, then sighed and said, “I guess? I...I can  _ try.” _

“Hey, that’s the spirit!” Donut exclaimed, grinning. He stood and poured Simmons another glass of wine, commenting “you look like you could use this,” before setting the bottle on the table and sitting back down. He watched as Simmons slowly slid the glass towards him and picked it up, then cleared his throat and said, “how about a toast?”

“To what?” Doc asked.

Donut shrugged. “How about...to the fact that everything’s gonna be okay?”

A small but uneasy smile appeared on Simmons’ face. “Sure,” he said, raising his glass.

Doc nodded and did the same. 

The three of them toasted, and Donut exclaimed “to everyone being okay!” And as he took a sip of his wine, eyes on the others, he couldn’t help but hope it wasn’t just wishful thinking.

 

* * *

 

Ever since Fox and Locus had left for Earth, things on Chorus had been quiet.  _ Too _ quiet. Sarge didn’t like it. What was more frustrating was that no one, to his knowledge, shared the same sentiment. It seemed like everyone around him was  _ happy _ about the silence. Sure, peace and quiet could be nice, but everything since the day Fox and Locus left was just routine, routine, routine. Sarge hated it. 

Not that he had really  _ done _ much to try to counter it. He had thought about suggesting a game of capture the flag, but with how everyone was preoccupied with strengthening defenses and maintaining patrols, he doubted it would go very well. Not to mention it was something he would need to take up with Kimball directly, and since Fox and Locus’ departure, she had been all business. So he didn’t need to think hard to imagine how  _ that _ would go.

With a sigh, Sarge stared out over the jungle, tapping his fingers against the side of his gun. Patrol was  _ almost _ over. Just a  _ little _ longer.  _ Just hold out a little longer. _ He turned his eyes back towards the trail he was walking on, listening as Jensen and Palomo chatted behind him.

“Did you hear what Smith said about Captain Caboose?” Jensen asked Palomo.

“What, that he’s been really sad since Fox left? That’s not really news,” Palomo replied.

“Well,  _ yeah, _ I know that!” Jensen said. “I just feel  _ bad _ is all. I mean, first he lost that AI friend of his, and then he started to really like Fox, and now she’s  _ gone.” _

“I mean...I guess? Speaking of which, how are you holding up? I know the two of you had like a bonding moment or whatever back when you were setting up that computer.”

“What, me and Fox, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“I mean, it’s not like we were best friends or anything. She seemed nice enough though.”

“Well yeah, but how are you  _ doing?” _

“Okay? I guess? Like I said, I didn’t really know her too well. Really most of the time I spent down there with here was when Doctor Grey asked me to help. If anything,  _ she’s _ the one people should be worrying about,” Jensen replied.

_ That _ piqued Sarge’s interest, and he had to resist the urge to turn around and start asking questions. 

“Who, Doctor  _ Grey?” _ Palomo asked.  _ “Why?” _

“Well I mean, she seemed to really  _ like _ Fox. ‘Cause they were both smart and stuff,” Jensen replied.

“Did you try talking to her about it?”

“Yeah, a few days ago. But she kind of just waved me off. Acted like it wasn’t important. But like...she’s just been so  _ quiet _ whenever I go down there.”

Under his helmet, Sarge frowned. Sure, he wasn’t exactly best friends with Doctor Grey, but he knew her well enough to know that she was anything  _ but _ quiet. Which meant that something had to be wrong. Sarge looked up towards the canopy above, thinking. Grey had seemed personable enough when he and the rest of the Reds and Blues had first met her. And it made sense that she wouldn’t want to open up to someone like Jensen who was formerly her enemy. But it didn’t make sense that Grey, of all people, would bottle her feelings up. Especially being a doctor. 

Sarge looked back towards the trail as he felt the ground begin to slope under his feet, and realized they had reached the part of the path that led back down the cliff towards headquarters. Staring at the ground, the wheels in his head began to turn. If Grey was holing herself up in her lab, then it meant that she probably didn’t have someone to talk to, which Sarge couldn’t help but feel was  _ wholly  _ unacceptable, considering she was part of their team. Making his way down the side of the cliff, he decided to go find her after patrol was over. If no one else was going to make an effort to talk to her and find out what was wrong, then he  _ would. _

The next half hour of patrol ticked by at a snail’s pace, and when it was finally up, Sarge bolted for the armory to turn in his weapons before making his way down to Grey’s lab. Stepping off the elevator, he made his way down the hall with his helmet tucked under one arm, stopping short of the lab doors when he realized that he had absolutely no plan of what he was going to say. Of course, he only stood there for a second before he shrugged to himself and knocked on the lab door. Improvisation led to the most interesting conversations, after all. 

Sarge stood there in silence for an uncomfortably long moment, wondering if maybe Grey hadn’t heard him, or simply wasn’t in the lab. He glanced towards the elevator, then raised a fist to knock on the door again when it suddenly opened and he found himself face-to-face with Doctor Grey.

“Oh, Sarge!” she exclaimed. “I...wasn’t expecting you.”

“‘S’alright,” Sarge shrugged. 

“Did you need something?” Grey asked, leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed. 

“Well.... _ no.” _

Grey gave him a curious look. “Then  _ what _ can I do for you?”

“Er...well...you’ve been makin’ yerself scarce lately, and I wanted to come by and see how you were holdin’ up,” Sarge replied.

Grey raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re... _ concerned _ about me?”

“That’s right!”

A small smile formed on Grey’s face, and she stepped back out of the doorframe. “I’m fine, Sarge. Though I appreciate the concern.”

“Oh,” Sarge said, trying to think of a way to keep the conversation from ending prematurely. “Well...so how’re things goin’ down here?”

The smile on Grey’s face turned knowing. She turned and waved at him to follow her into the lab. “It’s been quiet,” she said, walking over to and sitting down at the workbench near the entrance.

“What’re ya workin’ on?” Sarge asked, coming to a stop on the other side of the workbench and nodding at the piece of equipment on the table in front of her.

“Hmm?” Grey asked, then looked down at the machinery and let out a small laugh, shaking her head. “It’s just an old storage unit that you could hypothetically put an AI in. Ever since we found out about Santa, I’ve been working to try to get it fixed. But with what happened to Epsilon...I was thinking of trying to get whatever’s left of that code out of that armor and into this unit. Just in case we had a use for it later.”

“Huh,” Sarge said, setting his helmet down on the table. “Must be nice to have this space all to yerself again. Gives you plenty of room to spread out.”

And Grey’s expression turned a little sad. “The space is nice, I’ll admit. But…”

“But ya miss Fox,” Sarge finished.

Grey turned her eyes up at him, then leaned back with a sigh. “It was nice having someone who could keep up with me,” she said, looking away. 

“Well…” Sarge began. “I’m sure if you gave one of us a chance, we might surprise you.”

Grey looked back at him with a slightly amused look. “Oh,  _ really, _ ” she said.

“Sure!” Sarge exclaimed. “I mean, heck, I  _ built _ Lopez and Lopez 2.0!”

“The...robot that tried to kill you and all of your friends, you mean,” Grey said flatly.

“S’not my fault they’re a couple of ungrateful lowlifes!”

“Wait, wait,” Grey said, holding up a hand.  _ “They? _ I thought just Lopez 2.0 tried to kill you?”

“No, they’ve both tried. But neither of ‘em were smart enough to succeed, and that ought to tell you something!”

Grey gave Sarge a quizzical look, one corner of her mouth slightly upturned in what might have been an amused half-smile or the start of a concerned grimace. “I  _ see…” _ she said slowly. 

Sarge, realizing she wasn’t convinced, quickly said “look, th’ point is, yer not  _ alone _ now that Fox is gone. There’re other people who-- sure, maybe can’t quite keep up with ya, but are at least willin’ to  _ try.” _

Grey let out a long sigh, but a smile appeared on her face. “Is this your idea of a pep talk?” she asked.

Sarge shrugged. “If ya want it to be. I just figured it would help you t’ hear that is all.” He eyed her a moment, then asked “did it?”

And Grey let out a startling laugh. “Not really. But the effort  _ is _ appreciated.” She looked over at him, still smiling, then said “oh well. We got on just fine without her, didn’t we? I’m sure I’ll get used to not having her around eventually. And it’s not like I can’t just reach out to her on that computer if I ever want to talk.”

“Yeah, see? You have nothin’ to worry about!” Sarge exclaimed, a little satisfied that at least her mood seemed to have improved. 

Grey just nodded, her smile fading a little bit. 

Sarge, not wanting to leave on such an uncertain note, asked “so how long have you been down here for anyways?”

“All day, I suppose,” Grey replied, looking a little curious.

“Well, you eat lunch yet?”

And the smile was back on Grey’s face and she gave a little laugh. “No. No I haven’t.”

“Well, hey, neither have I. Wanna join me?”

“I guess it couldn’t hurt,” Grey chuckled, rising to her feet. 

A triumphant grin on his face, Sarge picked his helmet up off the table and tucked it under his arm, and he and Grey walked out of the lab together.

 

* * *

 

The first thing Kimball did when she ended the transmission with Fox was head to her office and pour herself a drink. After sucking it down and giving herself a moment to regain her composure, she headed back out into the hallway to find something to busy herself with. Her feet automatically brought her towards the motor pool, and she figured she may as well see how things were looking there. 

Stepping through the doors into the motor pool, she became acutely aware of what sounded like rock and roll music coming from somewhere over by the workbenches. Following her ears, she made her way over to the source of the music, finding a small radio sitting on one of the shelves. On the workbench next to it was an empty bag of chips and a couple of tools.  _ Grif, _ Kimball thought, sighing inwardly. She glanced around before turning back to the radio and switching it off, then started back towards the exit, figuring the she ought to find something else to do, since there was no one around. It wasn’t like she could just get in a Warthog and go for a joyride by herself,  _ especially _ as a  _ general. _ However, right as she was about to reach the door, Grif stepped through, nearly bumping into her.

“Oh shit!” he exclaimed breathlessly. “Jesus, you almost gave me a heart attack!”

“I’m...sorry,” Kimball said slowly, stepping back to give him some room. 

Grif just shook his head and looked over at her. “Do you... _ need _ something? I don’t think I’ve seen you down here...ever.”

“No,” Kimball sighed. “I was just making rounds to see how everyone’s doing.”

“It’s your first time coming here, then,” Grif said flatly.

“I usually don’t need to. Jensen or Simmons typically let me know if there’s anything worth worrying over down here,” Kimball replied. 

“Right,” Grif said, then fell silent.

Kimball, having nothing else to add, did the same, becoming acutely aware of the sound of ventilation overhead filling the empty space. After a moment, she cleared her throat, trying to alleviate the awkwardness of the situation, and asked “so how are things looking?”

“Uh, alright, I guess?” Grif replied. “There hasn’t really been anything for me to fix since that last fight with the pirates.”

“I see,” Kimball said. “And how are you doing?”

_ “Me?” _ Grif asked.

“Yes,” Kimball replied slowly, unsure of why he sounded so surprised by her inquiry. 

“I dunno. I’m fine, I guess.” Grif tilted his head at her. “Don’t be offended by this, but is something up with you?”

“What makes you ask that?” Kimball asked. 

Grif shrugged. “Fuck, I don’t know. This whole conversation just feels weird, is all.”

Kimball sighed again and said “I suppose...I’m trying to figure out where things need to go from here, is all,” managing to surprise herself, because she hadn’t even realized it until she’d said it aloud. The truth was, with the threat of pirate attacks having diminished significantly, Kimball wasn’t quite sure what to do with herself. The past seven years of her life had been nothing but bloodshed. It had become mechanical for her to get up every morning and suit up in power armor and go out into the field with the understanding that she might not see the next day. With all of that out of the way, she felt... _ lost. _ And to make matters worse, she was having this revelation in the middle of a dusty motor pool in front of one of her subordinates. Outstanding. 

“Yeah that sounds like it sucks,” Grif said, nodding. 

“That’s an understatement,” Kimball replied.

“So...what are you going to do?” Grif asked.

“Gather resources and start making plans to rebuild, I suppose,” Kimball said, the weight of responsibility bearing down on her.

“No I meant what are you going to do right now?”

Kimball looked up at Grif, back stiff with confusion. “What do you mean?”

Grif shrugged. “It’s not like you can do anything right now, right? And even if you could, why would you  _ want _ to? You’ve already had enough stress today with that shit Fox and Locus got involved in.”

“I can’t just sit around and do nothing. There are people relying on me to protect Chorus!” Kimball exclaimed.

“Yeah, and you  _ did _ that, but there isn’t anything for you to protect  _ against _ right now. So why not take a load off?” Grif said, turning and walking towards one of the Warthogs. 

“I can’t-- Where are you _ going?”  _ Kimball asked.

“I was gonna take a Warthog for a spin,” Grif replied over his shoulder as he climbed into the driver’s side. “You should come with me.”

“I…” Kimball sucked in a deep breath. “There are more important things I should be--”

“I won’t complain about the patrol schedule for a month,” Grif interrupted. 

Under her helmet, Kimball bit her lip. It wasn’t exactly a tempting offer, as she’d learned to put up with Grif’s moaning and groaning. But the fact that he was trying to bribe her at all was enough to pique her interest. She argued internally with herself for a moment before finally walking over to the passenger’s side of the Warthog, dragging her feet the whole way there. “I don’t want to be out for more than an hour,” she said, climbing into the seat.

“If you say so,” Grif replied, starting the Warthog’s engine and steering it towards the motor pool exit. There was a beeping sound as the motion detector picked up the Warthog, and the garage door lifted up in front of them. As they drove down the trail, Kimball stole a look behind her, watching the door slowly drop shut. 

Grif was silent for a good portion of the ride; something Kimball was thankful for, as it gave her some time to think. The incident that had occurred in the Emblem building, if anything, proved to her that Hargrove had shifted his focus to saving his own skin instead of continuing his assault on Chorus. Which meant that it was time to start rebuilding the colony as much as they could. Which meant a governing infrastructure needed to be established, and resources needed to be gathered, and workers needed to be hired, and damage needed to be assessed. The more she thought about it, the heavier the weight on her shoulders felt, until she was slouching in her seat, sullenly watching as the jungle whipped past her in a blur. 

Kimball looked towards the front of the Warthog when she felt it begin to slow, watching as Grif pulled up alongside a rocky hill and stopped. “Where are we?” she asked, ears pricking to the sound of running water nearby.

“It’s a place I found a while ago,” Grif said over his shoulder as he walked away from her. 

Kimball followed him at a distance, looking around as she took in her surroundings, listening as the sound of water grew louder and rose to a dull roar in the distance. “Is there some sort of stream?” she called out as the roar of water grew louder.

“You’ll see,” Grif called back, leading her into a small maze of tall, dark, moss-covered rocks .

Kimball glanced up at them as she followed Grif, eyes scanning over the ferns and vines that grew out of small crevices where dirt had gathered. She frowned when she noticed that some of the rocks were wet, and turned her head forward right as she stepped into a thick mist of vapor floating in the air. Through it, she could make out the orange of Grif’s armor, and she walked towards him, her feet scuffing against the leaf litter as she stopped next to him, eyes wide with surprise under her helmet. 

In front of them, cutting through the rocky side of a cliff, was a narrow waterfall that dropped onto a ledge directly in front of them before falling over the edge several hundred feet into the valley below. Kimball stared at it for a moment, then, a frown settling on her face, turned to Grif and asked. “Why did you bring me here?”

Grif looked over at her and shrugged. “It’s just a nice spot, is all. Me and Tucker found it one time when we were out fucking with the mercs one day.”

“That didn’t answer my question, Captain Grif.”

Grif tilted his head at her, then said “you need to learn how to relax.”

And Kimball felt her shoulders go rigid.  _ “Excuse _ me?”

“The war’s over. And yeah, you’ve still got stuff to worry about being a general and all, but that doesn’t mean you need to run yourself ragged,” Grif continued. 

“I’m  _ not.” _

“Really? Because I can’t remember you taking a single day off since we got here.”

Kimball sucked in a breath, then said in a low, frustrated voice, “we were at  _ war. _ I didn’t have  _ time _ for a day off!”

Grif didn’t respond, and instead leaned back against one of the rocks jutting out of the cliffside next to him, crossing his ankles. “You know, back at Blood Gulch, before we found out that our entire reason for being there was a lie and that we were trying to kill each other for nothing, we took  _ plenty _ of breaks.” He turned his gaze up towards the canopy above. “Hell, we had whole  _ days _ where we wouldn’t do anything productive.” He looked back over at her. “So I guess my whole point in saying all this is that...you don’t have to do  _ anything _ right now.”

Under her helmet, Kimball bit her lip. Then she frowned and tilted her chin down slightly. “I can’t just sit around and do  _ nothing, _ Grif. The people of Chorus are  _ relying _ on me.”

“And I  _ get _ that,” Grif said. “But how are you gonna help them if you’re always worrying and stressing about stuff that’s way, way  _ bigger _ than you are?” 

Kimball wasn’t sure how to respond to that, and Grif must have taken her silence as an invitation to continue, because he said “look...you’re...probably one of the best leaders I’ve ever met. And I’m not just saying that because I’m stuck with Sarge.”

Kimball blinked. “Thank...you?” she replied confusedly, taken off-guard by the compliment. Out of all of the Reds and Blues, Grif was the one who argued with her the most. Kimball had chalked it up to him disliking the fact that she had more authority over him than any of his teammates due to him being appointed a captain in her army, and left it at that. So the fact that he had just  _ complimented _ her leadership to her face left her more than a little stunned. 

Grif let out a sigh that seemed to deflate him a little bit. “Jesus Christ, I’m trying to be sincere here.”

“I...see that,” Kimball replied slowly, then cleared her throat and said “you may continue.”

“Wow, thanks,” Grif said flatly. He crossed his arms, then continued, “okay so you’re a good leader, and you ask for help and stuff, but you get overwhelmed when stuff gets too big. Like the  _ entire _ time that Fox and Locus were here, you were cooped up in your office  _ all _ the time.”

“Because there was  _ work _ to do,” Kimball said.

“Yeah, but not all of it needs to happen at once,” Grif replied. “And sometimes you need to step back. Why do you think I take naps all the time?”

_ Because you’re lazy, _ Kimball thought, but choked it down and said “you’re trying to tell me that you take naps because you need to ‘step back?”

“Uh,  _ yeah?” _ Grif replied. “Shit’s been  _ tough _ since we got here. Everything we had to deal with because of Project Freelancer looks  _ easy _ next to what we got involved in here.” He let out a long sigh and looked away. “We’ve been through a lot of shit. We’ve lost friends, gotten blown up, shot, run over, stabbed, had our asses kicked by our own teammates, been lied to. Tucker had a fucking  _ kid. _ Simmons got turned into a cyborg. My sister enlisted just to find me and wound up getting left behind when we came here and I don’t even know if she’s  _ alive.” _ He looked back towards Kimball. “So yeah, sometimes I need to step back. And you-- you’ve been through shit that’s probably  _ way _ worse than what me and the others have gone through. So if  _ I _ need time to relax and sort things out every once and a while, you  _ definitely _ do.”

And Kimball stared at him, guilt tying her stomach in a knot. She  _ knew _ the Reds and Blues had been through a lot, but hearing it from  _ Grif, _ of all people, somehow helped to solidify the gravity of it all. And she suddenly wished that she had been more patient with him earlier. “I...appreciate your honesty,” she began slowly. “But how... _ how _ can I take time off when I know that my people need me?”

Grif shrugged. “I mean, you have Grey and Wash and Carolina, right? You basically consult with them for everything anyways. Just ask one of them to take over when you need a break.”

Kimball sighed. “None of them have the political experience--”

“Do  _ you?” _ Grif interrupted.

Kimball fixed him in a glare. “I understand the needs of the people of Chorus.”

“But you’re not a politician,” Grif said flatly. 

“Armonia was the capital of our colony, and was where  _ all _ of the governing officials resided. The  _ entire _ population of that city was wiped out, practically overnight, in one of the harder battles of the civil war. There isn’t anyone with significant political experience  _ left,” _ Kimball replied exasperatedly.

“Okay…” Grif said slowly, sounding like he was thinking hard, “well...you’ve been doing a good job so far, like I said, and you’re not a politician. So why should the person who takes over when you need a break be either? I mean, Grey’s really smart. She’d probably do pretty well covering for you for a day if you needed her to.” He uncrossed his arms and continued, “and besides, if all the politicians are dead, people are going to have to step up to replace them. You might as well be one of them. And you could get...I don’t know... _ Carolina _ or someone to do the same thing. I mean, she’s the one who was the most into the idea of getting involved here anyways.”

And Kimball’s mind went back to the conversation she had with Carolina the night that  _ The Staff of Charon _ had been stalled. Carolina  _ had _ expressed willingness to help far beyond what Kimball had asked of her. “I…” She looked over at Grif. “I suppose I’ll see what I can do.”

Grif gave her an approving nod. “Good.”

Kimball stood there for a moment, listening to the roar of the waterfall, her eyes drifting to the clock in the corner of her helmet’s hud. They had been out for much longer than an hour. “We should head back.”

“Why?” Grif asked. 

Kimball looked over at him. “I said no more than an hour, Grif. I meant it.”

“Well how long has it been?” Grif asked. 

“An hour and a half.”

And Grif shook his head and said “we’re already late. We might as well stay out a little longer.”

And Kimball drew herself up to argue, but then remembered everything Grif had said, and begrudgingly huffed out “fine. Ten more minutes.”

“Sounds good,” Grif said, pushing off of the wall and walking over to the bank of the ledge that the waterfall dropped down to, taking a seat cross-legged several feet from the water. 

Curious, Kimball slowly walked over and stopped next to him. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Watching the waterfall,” Grif replied without looking up at her. “Wanna join me?”

Kimball looked back over at the waterfall, watching as the mist rising from it caught in the glare of the dying afternoon sun. Then she sighed and wordlessly sat down next to Grif, watching the water pass quickly in front of them before dropping over the edge into the valley. 

Grif suddenly let out an audible yawn, then lay back with his arms folded behind his head.

_ “Now _ what are you doing?” Kimball asked.

“Gonna take a ten minute power nap,” Grif replied. He turned his head slightly to look at her. “You should try it.”

“I don’t think I could fall asleep in less than ten minutes,” Kimball remarked.

Grif didn’t reply, and stayed in his current position.

_ Oh you can’t have fallen asleep that fast, _ Kimball thought. She looked back over at the waterfall, then let out a long sigh and lay back as well, mimicking Grif and folding her arms behind her head as well. She stared up at the canopy above them for a while, watching the trees sway with the wind, then closed her eyes and let the sound of the waterfall lull her into a sense of calm. 

She would talk to Carolina later, but right now, she needed this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YAS GRIF TEACH KIMBALL HOW TO RELAX YOU WONDERFUL PERSON YOU. Listen she needs to learn how to chill out ok. Give them time to relax like human beings.  
> Also I really want them to get along.
> 
> I know I drew Snow twice this chapter but it’s cuz I wanted to get her armor down early and also I just felt like it.
> 
> Nalome is pronounced with a hard O sound. Like Nah-lō-m with a silent E at the end. In case any of you were wondering how to say it.
> 
> Btw, I HC that Siris is NOT a heavy sleeper, so he 100% knows Locus stole his ice pack. Don’t be mad Siris, he was just trying to keep you from getting that nice suit all wet!   
> What a fucking dweeb.
> 
> How does that retinal scan technology work, you ask? So you basically go into a dark box and sit there until your pupils expand to their maximum size (as they do when your eyes adjust to the dark to allow more light in.) This causes a large portion of your retina, which is at the back of your eyeball, to be exposed. What happens then is a mechanism behind the glass activates a pair of mini spotlight sort of things and takes a picture of your retina. That image gets archived, and your scan is complete. Then the room gradually brightens, taking about two minutes to reach the same brightness as the room outside of the box, to allow your eyes to slowly adjust back and cause minimal discomfort.  
> I’m obviously not a scientist, but I imagine that taking a retinal scan while your pupils are expanded to their fullest is the most logical way to go about it. Since at that point, you’re seeing as much of the retina as possible. So even if the subject’s pupils are contracted to varying degrees when they’re being scanned at an access point, for example, they’ll still have a big image to run the one taken at the access point against.   
> Basically, they take a big picture now to run little pictures against later.   
> I’m making science shit up. Help.  
> The suspension of disbelief is strong in this chapter.
> 
> Rick, you deserved better. I am so sorry my dude.


	22. Maine Event

Red bleeding against white armor and the cold, detached voice of a doctor saying the odds of survival were slim, and a full recovery was even slimmer. A hand tightly gripping the side of the gurney, only letting go when he couldn’t follow any longer past the double doors. Hours ticking by in the waiting room, watching the floor beneath his feet as he paced back and forth. The cold feeling of guilt and anger in his stomach when he learned his friend would never speak again. _That_ was the scene Wash was brought back to as he gazed down at the white EVA amor lying empty on the table under the dim lighting. He swallowed hard past the cold ball of pain that had settled in his chest and ran a hand roughly through his hair, looking around the empty room.

It was a lab similar to the one that Grey and Fox had set up the quantum computer in, but much smaller. Glancing back over his shoulder, he could see the light of the hallway shining through the windowed doors, and make out the entrance to the primary lab that Grey worked in. He stared out those small windows for a moment before looking back down at the armor. _Maine’s_ amor.

Grey had been working on it, trying to get what information she could out of it, trying to see if there was a way to accomplish what Charon had failed to do; to make the armor enhancements run without an AI. Ever since they had recovered it from _The Staff of Charon,_ it had been locked away in the sublevel of the New Republic headquarters. Neither Wash nor Carolina had protested. They had both agreed that Grey should at least _try_ to get something out of it. If not the armor enhancements, then what was left of the AI fragments, and if not them, then some insight into what Charon was trying to accomplish by modifying the armor.

There had to be _something,_ Wash had told himself after they rescued the Reds and Blues. So when he heard from Sarge that Grey was working on some sort of storage unit for the AI fragments yesterday, he had asked Grey for an update on the matter. Now he was waiting for her in a dark room with the armor of his dead friend on a table in front of him. Great.

There was a click behind him, and he looked over his shoulder as the door opened, expecting Doctor Grey, and instead getting “Tucker?”

Tucker closed the door behind him, his hand going towards the lightswitch on the wall. “Uh, dude, what are you _doing_ in here? Why is it so _dark?_ And-- where the _hell_ is the lightswitch?”

“Other side,” Wash said flatly, nodding to the wall to Tucker’s right.

“Oh,” Tucker said, walking over and hitting the switch, looking up as the room brightened. “That’s _way_ better.” He walked over to where Wash was standing, freezing a few feet short when his eyes fell on the armor. “Wait _what?_ _That’s_ where that thing went?! This whole time I thought it got _wrecked!”_

“Grey’s been working on it to try to see what information she can get out of it,” Wash explained.

“Huh,” Tucker said, staring at the armor. He was quiet for some time, then asked “has she had any luck?”

“I don’t know. She told me to meet her here, but didn’t tell me anything else,” Wash replied.

Tucker gave him a solemn look. “That doesn’t sound like good news.”

“No,” Wash agreed, “it doesn’t. But we’ll have to see--” he cut off when he heard the door open behind him, and both he and Tucker looked back to see Grey step into the lab.

“Well hello hello,” Grey greeted, walking over to them with a datapad and a good-sized piece of equipment tucked under her arm. “I wasn’t expecting to see you down here, Tucker.”

“I came down here to ask him something,” Tucker replied.

“You did?” Wash asked, looking over at Tucker.

“Uh…” Tucker turned and gave him a mixture of a smile and a cringe. “Yeah... but I forgot what it was.” Then he shrugged and said “it probably wasn’t that important anyways.”

“If you say so,” Wash replied, looking back to Grey. “So what do you have?”

_“Well,”_ Grey began, walking around and setting both her datapad and the piece of equipment down on a tool cart on the other side of the table the armor was laying on. “I would _love_ to tell you, but we’re waiting on Carolina to join us.”

“You called Carolina down here too?” Wash asked, a wave of unease settling over him.

Grey nodded. “She needs to hear this too. And Tucker...it’s probably a good thing that you decided to join us too.”

“It’s not good news, is it?” Tucker asked, and Wash looked over at him when he heard the tightness in his teammate’s voice.

Grey just sighed, and then looked past them when the doors opened once more, and Carolina stepped through.

She seemed to pick up on the mood in the room, as she hesitated for a moment after entering before slowly making her way to Wash’s side. Her eyes fell on the armor, and she stared at it in silence for a moment before looking up at Grey. “You said there was an update for us,” she said.

“All business, huh?” Grey asked, but the smile on her face seemed forced. Then her expression grew serious as she straightened up and nodded at the helmet. “Wash, Carolina, as you two know, I’ve been looking into the technology that was implemented into this armor by both Project Freelancer and Charon. I was able to do a thorough scan of the data and hardware, and was able to pull quite a bit of information regarding how Charon tried to upgrade the armor to make the enhancements it had attached to it run without an AI. In that regard, I had plenty of success, and I actually plan to contact Fox later and see what she can make of it.” She looked over at Carolina and said, “her and I may be able to come up with a way for you to run your armor enhancements again, Carolina.”

Carolina nodded silently.

“What about the AI’s?” Tucker asked.

And the look Grey gave him told Wash everything he needed to know. “They’re gone, aren’t they?” he asked slowly.

Grey let out a long sigh and looked over at him. “Yes...and no.”

“What do you mean?” Carolina asked, crossing her arms.

“What I mean is that...even though Epsilon is gone, the AI fragments that were a part of his system are still there.”

Wash perked up at that. “So can you extract them?”

And Grey met his gaze with a small, sad frown and shook her head. “That’s the problem,” she said. “I _can_ extract them. That’s what our _happy_ little storage unit here is for,” she reached out and patted the large, ovular piece of equipment, rattling the tool cart. “But even if I do that, they’d be too corrupted from what happened to Epsilon for them to ever be capable of running again. It would just be dead code.”

And out of the corner of his eye, Wash could see Tucker’s shoulders sink. “But…” he began. “But can’t you just _fix_ them? I mean...you’re the smartest person on this planet, right? There’s gotta be a way…”

Wash, without really thinking about it, reached out a put a hand on Tucker’s shoulder, then looked over at Grey and asked “have you told Fox about any of this? She’s an expert in dealing with AI’s. She might know what to do.”

Grey shook her head. “Like I said, I was going to later. But she’s probably going to tell me the same thing I’m about to tell you. The Epsilon unit and all of its fragments were based off of a brain scan. When Epsilon deleted himself, he removed himself from the data of all the fragments as well. And in doing that, he punched a hole through...what’s essentially the _brains_ of each of these AI fragments. It’s like...if I took your brain, Tucker, and pulled out all of the information in it that told your body how to breathe or move or what have you.”

“So what you’re saying is that all the fragments are vegetables?” Tucker asked, looking alarmed.

_“Horribly_ insensitive word choice, but _yes,”_ Grey replied. “Parts of their ‘brains,’ because of what happened to Epsilon, have simply ceased to function, or in some cases, exist. We’re talking _thousands_ of lines of code lost forever. And because these AI’s are based off of a brain scan, that code isn’t something that we can necessarily predict, because each fragment was essentially their own individual. Putting them back together again is just as much brain surgery as it is computer science, and reassembling their code in a way that will allow them to operate at full function again, at this point, will take nothing less than a miracle.”

Carolina shook her head slightly, eyes fixed on the EVA helmet. “Fox has connections. She has all that information at her fingertips. She might be able to find a way to help us.”

“I think…” Wash said slowly. “I think we should just let them rest.”

“But they didn’t have to die!” Tucker exclaimed, pulling away from him. _“None_ of them had to die! So if we can at least save _some_ of them, then we have to _try!”_

“I never said we shouldn’t, Tucker,” Wash said, crossing his arms.

Tucker just met his gaze defiantly, then turned his head away and glared down at the armor, his hands balled into fists at his sides.

They all stood in silence for a moment, and Wash let his eyes drift to the EVA helmet, frowning when he saw Carolina’s reflection on its surface. He looked over at her, noting the expression of concentration on her face, like she was thinking hard about something.

She was silent for a moment longer before she said, “the AI fragments were created through torture. Their data was corrupted when they were pulled from Alpha. The Director found some way to fix them enough to get them working, but…” Her face screwed up in frustration. “The only person close enough to him to have known _how_ was Aiden Price, and we don’t even know where he is, or if he’s still _alive.”_

Wash watched her for a moment, thinking hard, then said “it’s a start. At the very least, it’ll give Fox an idea of where to look.”

Grey nodded. “She _does_ have an AI that can access any information put into the U.N.S.C.’s database. Maybe she’ll be able to find something about the AI fragments on there.”

“Like what?” Tucker asked.

Grey shrugged. “Not sure. Maybe they had backups of the AI’s, or something that could help us fix them. From what I’ve heard, Project Freelancer was a shitshow, but I doubt they were careless enough to not have a way of restoring some of their most valuable assets if something happened to them.”

“Carolina?” Wash asked, looking over at her.

She shook her head. “I don’t know Wash. I’ve got nothing.” She looked up at him and added “we’ll just have to leave this up to Fox.”

“Great,” Tucker said bitterly. “So now what?”

“Well now,” Grey began, bending down and pulling a thick cable out of a drawer in the tool cart, “I’m going to pull everything that I can out of this armor.” She turned the EVA helmet to the side and plugged one end of the cord to the port in the back, and the other end to the storage unit she had brought in with her “What happens afterwards is up to you two,” she added, looking up at both Wash and Carolina and meeting both of their gazes before returning to her work.

Wash watched as she pulled out another, smaller cable and hooked it up to both her datapad and the storage unit and began to run a program. Whatever she did, it made the lights on the armor flicker on, and for a moment, Wash was back at Maine’s side after the sarcophagus mission. Swallowing hard, he looked away, over towards one of the corners of the room, listening to the sound of the ventilation system overhead.

“Wash?”

At the sound of Tucker’s voice, Wash looked back towards the others and wet his lips, then softly said “we should bury him.”

“What?” Tucker asked.

Wash hesitated and looked over at Carolina, who narrowed her eyes slightly as though to indicate she wanted him to elaborate. So he cleared his throat and said again “I think...we should bury...it. The armor, I mean. You know, since...it’s all we’ve got left.”

Carolina blinked, then straightened up. “I agree,” she said after a moment. “I think... I think that’s the right thing to do.” She looked over at Tucker and added “for all of us. It’ll give _everyone_ some closure.”

Tucker didn’t say anything, but looked down at the floor, and Wash felt hit stomach knot up with worry.

“Sounds like a plan,” Grey chimed, eyes on the datapad in her hand. “How about you all go scout out a location? It’ll give you something to do while I finish this.” She looked over at them and added “I should be all done by the time you get back.”

“Are there shovels?” Tucker asked.

“Well of _course!_ What? Did you think I was going to make you _shoot_ a grave?” Grey asked with a small laugh.

Tucker made a noncommittal sound and looked over at Wash, who said “come on. Why don’t we find the others and get suited up? We’ll cover more ground that way.”

“I’ll go let Kimball know where we’re going,” Carolina offered, walking past the two of them.

“She knows you’re coming, I already sent her a message,” Grey spoke up.

“Come on, Tucker,” Wash sighed, turning and starting after Carolina, a ball of ice beginning to form in the pit of his stomach as he stepped out the door and into the hallway, listening to the sound of Tucker’s footsteps behind him as they headed towards the armory.

 

* * *

 

It didn’t take long to gather everyone after leaving Grey’s lab. And after taking a half-hour reviewing some maps of the area, they all spread out to scout a few chosen key points of interest. Tucker was quiet throughout most of it, a somber silence settling over him as the finality of their task weighed down on him. They were burying Church. After all the times he had died, this one was finally it. And while Tucker liked to think that he had already gotten through the grieving process, he couldn’t help but feel some disbelief. It wasn’t until later that afternoon when Grey reached out to them over comms to tell them that the Meta’s armor was ready to be buried that it all finally sank in.

Him and the rest of his team met up with the Reds on a hill that overlooked a valley; the location they had all decided on after Simmons had sent photos of it to the datapad Wash had been carrying. Carolina joined them shortly after, having gone off on her own to scout, climbing the hill and stopping beside Wash with her hands on her hips, surveying the location.

“This is nice,” she said with an approving nod.

“Figured you’d say that,” Sarge replied, swinging the shovel in his hands back over his shoulder to rest.

Tucker looked down at the shovel in his own hands. Sarge had passed them out to everyone when they had arrived at the hill. “So...are we going to start digging?” he asked.

“How deep should we go?” Simmons asked. “The Meta was pretty big.”

“He...they aren’t in the suit. The armor should fit in a normal grave,” Wash replied, his voice a little softer than usual. Tucker remembered that him and Carolina weren’t just burying Church today.

“Well, you heard ‘em!” Sarge exclaimed. “Start diggin!”

“Can’t we just blow a hole in the ground instead?” Grif whined. “We have _grenades!”_

“No grenades,” Carolina said firmly.

“Aw,” Donut said, putting away the grenade he’d pulled out the second Grif mentioned it.

Tucker just rolled his eyes and said “come on Caboose.” Then he jammed the blade of the shovel into the ground and started to dig.

“Can we make a sandcastle after?” Caboose asked, stepping up beside him.

“With what sand?” Tucker replied.

“He could make a dirt castle,” Simmons suggested, joining them.

“Why don’t you two go on ahead and get that armor from Doctor Grey?” Sarge asked, nodding at Wash and Carolina. “We can take care of things here.”

Tucker looked over and watched as Wash and Carolina exchanged a look, realizing they would be stuck carrying the closest thing they had to the body of their friend back to the hill. “Can’t we ask Grey to send someone?” he asked.

Wash looked over at him and shook his head. “No, it’s fine. Kimball’s already short of help without us around today. It doesn’t make sense to ask her to spare more men.”

Tucker frowned under his helmet. That made sense, but it still wasn’t a fair position to put them in. “Okay.”

Carolina jerked her head in the direction of the trail and brushed past Wash, who said “we’ll be back soon. Try not to blow anything up.”

“No grenades!” Carolina shouted up the hill.

“Looks like I brought them for nothing, then,” Donut huffed, picking up a shovel and packing in next to Simmons. Grumbling, Grif did the same.

They dug for a little while, managing to get about halfway before Grif stopped and looked over at Sarge, who had dug the blade of his shovel into the ground and was leaning against it. “Hey, how come _you’re_ not digging?”

“I’m supervisin’!” Sarge replied.

“Typical,” Grif huffed. “Make us do all the dirty work.”

_“Ha!”_ Donut laughed. “Dirty.”

“Oh! I get it! Because we’re digging and we’re getting dirty!” Caboose exclaimed.

“No, I think he was referencing the actual _dirt,”_ Simmons explained.

“Ohhhh. That’s not as funny though.”

Tucker just let out a frustrated sigh and wiped some dirt out of the corner of his visor. “Hey, Wash and Carolina should be back at headquarters by now, right?”

“Yeah…” Grif replied. “Why?”

Tucker cracked a grin under his helmet. “Well, this is taking too long. My arms are starting to fucking hurt. And it’s not like they can do anything if we _accidentally_ set a grenade or two off in this hole.”

“Tucker, yer thinkin like a Red!” Sarge exclaimed from above, sounding genuinely surprised.

Grif looked over at Tucker. “You’re finally speaking my language,” he said, then turned and launched his shovel out of the hole like a lance, and started to climb out.

Tucker shrugged. “You guys aren’t that hard to understand. Just gotta come up with a stupid plan, and _boom,_ you’re thinking like a Red,” he said as he climbed out.

“First of all, _Blue,_ there ain’t a single plan I’ve come up with that hasn’t panned out!” Sarge exclaimed.

“Plus, we’re kinda smarter than you guys,” Simmons added, struggling to climb out of the hole.

Grif stepped forward to assist and wound up dragging him up and across the ground a little ways before letting go of his hand.

“Since when?” Tucker asked, watching as he picked himself up and dusted his armor off.

“Since always!” Sarge exclaimed. “Donut suggested we used grenades earlier! You just stole his plan!”

_“I_ suggested we used grenades,” Grif corrected.

“Yeah, but you saw Donut _brought_ the grenades, and got the idea from there!”

“That’s not _stealing_ an idea! It’s called _getting_ an idea!”

“Well clearly, Donut thought of it first, because he’s the one who brought the grenades!”

“What are they arguing about?”

Tucker jumped when he heard Caboose stage whisper to him, looking over to see his teammate standing directly beside him. “Fuck, don’t sneak up on me like that!” he exclaimed, then added “I don’t know? Something stupid?”

“Speaking of Donut,” Simmons mused, walking over and peering into the hole, where Donut was still standing. “Hey, do you need help?”

“Nah, I don’t mind being deep in a hole,” Donut replied.

“It’s a Donut hole!” Caboose exclaimed.

Tucker snorted with laughter. “That was _awful!”_

“But you laughed,” Caboose said.

Tucker just shook his head, grinning under his helmet. “Come on, Donut. Get out. Wash and Carolina are probably on their way back.”

“He’s right! The longer we sit around and argue, the less time we have to pull this off!” Sarge exclaimed.

“Hey, _you_ started the argument!” Grif snapped.

“And I just finished it, too!” Sarge replied.

Tucker opted to ignore them and watched as Donut climbed out, pulling two grenades out and holding one in each hand.

“So, should I just use all of them?” Donut asked.

“Sounds good,” Tucker replied.

“I’m gonna go find cover,” Grif said, turning and walking away with a wave of his hand.

“Good idea,” Simmons said, tailing after him.

“More like standard procedure,” Sarge grumbled, following them.

“I’ll be right behind you!” Donut sang.

“Come on, Caboose,” Tucker said, jerking his head in the direction Grif was headed before starting after him.

“Won’t Agent Carolina get mad?” Caboose asked, following him.

“Big deal. She’ll get over it,” Tucker replied, following the Reds behind some boulders positioned on the downward slope of the hill and packing in next to them.

“Aaaand counting down from five,” Donut said over comms. “Five...four...three...two... _one!”_

Tucker heard the sound of a grenade pin being pulled over comms, and a few seconds later he picked up the sound of Donut running towards them. He barely made it behind the boulders when there was a loud _FOOM_ followed by a shower of dirt.

“Well, it sounds like that worked,” Simmons mused.

“Yeah, so here’s the plan,” Donut said, turning to the rest of them. “We tell Carolina that it was an ‘accident,” he explained, making air-quotes when he said the word ‘accident.’ “If she asks, I tripped and fell and the grenades went off and I was lucky to escape with my life.”

“Sounds good!” Sarge replied.

“You tripped and fell and the pins on all your grenades were pulled?” Tucker asked dubiously.

“Oh, she won’t ask about that!” Donut said dismissively with a wave of his hand. “She’ll be so concerned for my well being that she won’t even think about it!”

“I seriously doubt that,” Grif said, standing.

Tucker did the same, stepping out from behind the boulders and making his way over to the now much larger and deeper hole in the ground, putting his hands on his hips. “Well that was easy,” he said when the others joined him, gathering around the rim of the hole.

“Hey look! It’s Agent Washingtub and Carolina!” Caboose exclaimed, pointing past the thin trail of smoke that was weaving out of the hole towards the sky.

Following his finger, Tucker was able to pick out the form of a Pelican rising into the air and starting towards them. When it reached them, it circled twice like it was surveying the area, then set down on the easy slope of the hill. The hatch in the back opened, and Wash, Carolina, and Lopez (to Tucker’s surprise) leapt out.

Tucker’s heart sank when Carolina made an immediate beeline for them, her footsteps heavy against the grass as she stomped over to them, hackles raised.

“Oh, here we go,” Grif muttered.

“I specifically told you twice - not once, _twice_ \- not to use grandes. And _what_ did you do?” Carolina fumed when she reached them.

“Uh, to be fair, it _was_ an accident,” Caboose replied.

“Why did you do air-quotes?” Carolina asked.

“Yeah I don’t know what that is.”

“Air-quotes,” Carolina said. “When you said ‘accident,’ you did air-quotes. With your hands.”

“Because that’s what Donut did when he made us all promise to tell you that it was an accident and that he didn’t throw grenades into the hole like you told him not to,” Caboose replied.

Tucker buried his face in a hand.

Carolina slowly turned her head to look over at Donut, who was cowering behind Grif. _“What_ did I tell you?! We could have wound up digging _two_ graves today!”

“Hey, give us some credit. We know how to handle explosives!” Grif exclaimed.

“And I wouldn’t have minded so much if the second grave was for Grif,” Sarge added. “Just sayin’.”

Tucker looked over at Carolina and said “look, if it makes you feel any better, Church would have loved this.”

Carolina just let out a frustrated growl and looked sharply over at Wash like she expected him to have something to say.

Wash, who was in the process of unloading some sort of large, long, black metal box with Lopez’ help, simply shrugged at her and called out “look, we can argue later. Could we please get some help with this?”

“Oh! I can do it!” Caboose exclaimed, running over to them.

“Let’s go,” Tucker sighed to the others, following him. He glanced over at Carolina as he walked past her, keeping his head low, and stepped up beside Wash. Across from him, Grif and Sarge came over to help, and together, the six of them hauled the box out of the back of the Pelican.

“Let’s get it over to the hole,” Wash said, obvious strain in his voice.

“Why’s this shit so heavy?” Grif gritted out.

“It’s the box Grey put it in,” Wash replied. “She wanted to keep the armor preserved in case it needed to be dug up for any reason.”

“So this isn’t a permanent grave?” Tucker asked.

“It is, but if Charon throws a curveball at us, and there’s data on this thing that Grey didn’t get that could help us, we might need to pull it out and look at it again,” Wash replied. Then, as they came up on the hole, said “this should be good.”

Together, they set the box down at the edge of the grave, and Tucker looked over as the Pelican lifted off again and headed back towards headquarters.

“So, uh, what are we gonna do now?” Donut asked, looking anxiously over at Carolina.

“I guess…we could just slide it in? The edges are sloped, so it wouldn’t flip over,” Wash suggested, doing the same.

“That could work,” Carolina replied, sounding a little calmer, but with still-apparent tension in her voice.

“Well, you heard the lady,” Sarge said, walking over and leaning into the end of the box that wasn’t facing the hole. Grif and Caboose walked over to join him, and the three dug their heels in and slid the box across the ground pushing it in.

Tucker watched it slide into place, then walked over and picked up one of the shovels laying on the ground. Beside him, Simmons and Donut did the same, and the three of them began piling soil onto the box until it was covered.

“We’re not gonna have enough to even the ground out,” Simmons observed.

“I wonder why,” Carolina mused, glancing at Donut.

“This should be fine for now,” Wash said, pulling off his helmet and tucking it under his arm before swiping the back of his free hand across his brow. “There isn’t an actual body in that box, and we can always fill it in more later.”

“Good point,” Sarge agreed, taking off his helmet as well.

_I guess this is a thing we’re doing,_ Tucker thought, noticing how the others, sans Lopez, were following suit. With a small sigh, he set his shovel down, then reached up and took his own helmet off, breathing in the smell of dirt and gunpowder that still lingered in the air.

Everyone was silent for a moment, then Carolina cleared her throat and spoke up. “Does anyone want to say a few words?”

Tucker looked around at the others, noticing they were all doing the same, his eyes falling on Sarge when the older man suddenly said “I will.”

_“You_ have something to say about Church?” Tucker asked dubiously, watching in disbelief as Sarge produced a large envelope and pulled out several sheets of paper stapled together.”

_“What_ ...is _that?”_ Grif asked.

“It’s his obituary!” Sarge replied. “I got one for all of us!”

“But none of _us_ are dead!” Tucker exclaimed.

“Hmph, leave it to Blue team to not know what it’s like to be organized,” Sarge huffed. Beside him, Carolina dropped her head into one of her hands.

“That’s kinda... _dark,_ Sarge,” Donut said.

_“Es más como un pensamiento de ilusiones,”_ Lopez said flatly.

“Can we just get on with it?” Wash asked, sounding frustrated.

“Alright, quit yer naggin’!” Sarge grumbled, flipping through the papers before he found the one he was looking for. “Here we are! ...Church was a bitter, hot-headed, sonuvabitch whose girlfriend beat the livin’ daylights out of all of us, and was the _worst_ shot I’ve ever seen. But he was also - _admittedly-_ a decent tactician, a loyal teammate, and an okay leader who _sometimes_ put his teammates first.”

Tucker rolled his eyes. He should have known better than to expect something serious from Red Team. Frowning, he looked back at Sarge as the other man continued.

“And it’s one of those occasions where he put his teammates first that’s caused us to gather here today, on this hill. We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him. His sacrifice kept the rest of us around to keep kickin’ Hargrove’s ass, and that’s what we’re gonna do,” Sarge said, his grip tightening on the packet of paper, causing the pages to warp slightly. “He’ll be missed, but we’ll do okay without him as long as we stick together.”

With that he fell silent, and Tucker found himself staring at the ground, just soaking in everything that he heard. He only looked up again when he heard Sarge say “alright. That’s the best I’ve got. Anyone else?”

“Sarge, that was beautiful,” Simmons choked out, causing Tucker to look over at him and notice the fat tears rolling down his cheeks.

“Why thank you, Simmons! I came up with it last night!” Sarge replied.

“You made it sound like you’ve had that thing for _ages!”_ Grif exclaimed, nodding at the packet in Sarge’s hand.

“I have, for all of you anyways,” Sarge explained, then looked away, folding up the packet. “To be fair, I didn’t think I’d need one for Church after we figured out he was an AI. Guess I was wrong.”

Sarge’s words hit Tucker like a sack of bricks, and he struggled to breathe, turning his head away and biting his lip. _Oh for fuck’s sake, don’t start_ **_crying_ ** _you big baby!_ He thought angrily.

“Well, it was...nice…” Carolina said. “Thank you, Sarge.”

“Anyone else?” Was asked, looking around.

Grif raised his hand. “I got a few things,” he said, much to Tucker’s surprise. He stepped forward and looked down at the armor in the grave they had dug, then spoke up. “Church, you were an asshole, but you were one of the nicest asshole’s I’ve ever met. And I’ve met a _lot_ , of assholes.” He paused, making a point of looking around at everyone else before he continued. “You were the only person on Blue Team that wasn’t a complete idiot. And the few times we got stuck together we...actually had some kind of okay conversations. I don’t know. I didn’t know you as well as Blue Team did, but you seemed alright. Sorry about what happened...and um...thanks.” He finished and stepped back, and Tucker could have sworn his eyes were a little red for a second before he shoved his helmet back on and said “okay there. Someone else say something.”

And Tucker could feel the eyes of his teammates on him. Church was his best friend, of course he had to say _something,_ but _what?!_ What was there left to say? Church was _gone._ Tucker sucked in a short breath, feeling pathetic, and forced himself to say “um, I can.”

Beside him, Wash offered a nod of acknowledgement and said “go ahead.”

“Um,” Tucker cleared his throat, then spoke up. “I...uh. I knew Church for a really long time. He was...he was my best friend. And...Y’know, when I found out he was actually an AI, I kind of thought ‘oh good. I don’t have to worry about him dying.” And the moment he said it, he realized how true it was. And how much it had impacted his reaction to Epsilon’s death. “But the truth is, the real Church died a long time ago,” he sighed. “I...I guess I always sort of knew that. But I still...I still wanted him to be the same person. I still wanted him to be my friend. But it was like...like he just wasn’t _there_ anymore. I mean, it was definitely still _him_ . But he _wasn’t_ the same person. Not really. And I guess it just kinda...hurt...you know? Trying to be friends with someone who wasn’t himself anymore.” He looked away, “all that stupid shit we used to do way back when...I don’t even know if he remembered any of that. It sure didn’t feel like it. I guess...It’s just weird. Like I’ve been mourning him the whole time, but I didn’t really _know_ it until now. It just sucks.” And he felt tears start to well in his eyes, but he choked them back and said “but I mean...I guess...I guess I’m kind of grateful, also. Because without him, we wouldn’t all be here. Sarge was right. We owe him that. And it...it fucking sucks that that’s how it’s gotta be, but...I don’t know. I guess I’m kind of happy that he trusted us enough to… to die for us. Because it means that part of him was still there.”

Across from him, Simmons spoke up in a wobbly voice and added “h-he still cared about you.”

“He cared about all of us. That’s why he did it,” Sarge said.

“He--” Carolina spoke up, cutting off and exchanging a look with Wash before continuing. “This is what he wanted. The Project, and everything afterwards forced him to keep going. He deserved a chance to rest. And he went out the way he wanted to,” she looked over and made eye-contact with Tucker for a moment before sweeping her gaze over the others. “Whenever him and I were alone together, we talked about all of you. Sometimes. He did care, in his own way. And he showed it.”

Tucker tried to force a smile onto his face, and looked over at Caboose, who had been oddly quiet the whole time. “Hey, Caboose. You got anything?”

Caboose just looked over at him and pursed his lips and shook his head.

“Are you sure?” Wash asked.

“Hey, don’t sweat it! Lopez doesn’t have anything to say either!” Donut exclaimed supportively.

_“Nada amable, de todos modos,”_ Lopez added.

Tucker looked over as Wash cleared his throat and straightened up, exchanging a look with Carolina. “Well, um...I don’t have much to say about Epsilon that’s different from anything anyone else said. But...I would like to say something about the other friend that Carolina and I are burying today. If that’s alright with all of you.”

“You don’t need our permission,” Sarge replied.

Wash acknowledged him with a nod, then said “all of you met the Meta, but...none of you knew Agent Maine. He was...a friend of mine. _And_ Carolina, too. We didn’t...He didn’t deserve what happened to him. The Meta-- they weren’t him. But they used him, and in the end, got him killed.”

“What was he like?” Donut asked.

Tucker looked over at him, and noticed with surprise the attention that all of Red Team seemed to be giving Wash at the moment.

“He--” Wash exchanged a glance with Carolina. “Quiet. Didn’t talk much. Good in a fight. Used to just...throw himself at his enemies.”

“He was shot multiple times in the throat on a mission that left him unable to speak,” Carolina said. “Him and Wash spent hours together learning sign language so they could still communicate.”

“Uh...yeah,” Wash said, looking away. The ghost of a smile appeared on his lips as he added “he was way more talkative after that.”

“Didn’t North walk in on you two signing ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ back and forth?” Carolina asked, a small grin on her face.

Wash’s cheeks turned a little red at that, and he said “it was York, actually. And he wouldn’t let it go for a month afterwards.”

“That’s right.”

“But...anyways,” Wash said, the amusement gone from his voice as he looked back at the grave, rubbing the back of his neck absently. “He was a good friend. I finished mourning him a long time ago, but it’s...nice to finally put what’s left of him to rest.”

Carolina just nodded, pursing her lips and staring down at the grave. Tucker followed her gaze, at the end of his emotional stamina. All he felt now was tired.

“Well…this was really...um...sad,” Donut spoke up hesitantly. “But, uh, hey! Why don’t we all have like, a movie night or something tonight? It’ll help us all get into a better mood!”

“I don’t know…” Wash said.

“I agree with Donut,” Simmons said. “I think we could all use some time to not have to think about...this.”

“I’m only in if there’s action in it! No sloppy boring romcom nonsense like the last movie night!” Sarge replied, looking pointedly at Donut.

“Do whatever you want,” Carolina said, sounding a little tired as she put her helmet back on. “I probably won’t join you, though.”

Tucker put his helmet on and looked over at Donut. “I...don’t know. I’ll see how I feel later.”

“Oh-kay! Take your time!” Donut said, putting his helmet on and giving him a nod.

“I think…” Wash began, “I think we should all take a little bit of time to reflect on today.”

“Aw,” Donut said, but then perked up and added “well, you can always join in after you do that! It’s not like there’s a set time for this or anything!”

“Good idea,” Wash said, looking over at Carolina. “We should keep our options open.”

“So...now what?” Simmons asked as he put his helmet on.

“I’ve got a nap to take,” Grif replied. “All this emotional stuff wore me out.”

“I have other things I needed to do today,” Carolina spoke up, then turned and started down the hill. “I’ll be back at headquarters if you need me for anything,” she added over comms without looking back.

Tucker watched her go, then looked back at Wash, who said “we should all head back. It won’t help any of us to stay out here.” He jerked his head after Carolina and said “come on.”

“Right in front of you,” Sarge said, shoving his helmet on and brushing past him.

Tucker just shook his head and started down the hill, eyes drifting over to Caboose every now and then as the other man walked silently beside him, face unreadable behind his helmet, and couldn’t help but feel a pang of worry about his teammate. When Wash fell in place beside him, he looked over and quietly asked, “can we all talk when we get back?”

“I think we should have some time to ourselves. Get our heads straight, and maybe finish some of what we were scheduled to get done today,” Wash replied.

“What about after that?” Tucker asked, not looking for an argument, even though he wasn’t super fond of that plan.

Wash nodded, glancing at Caboose. “You noticed how he was acting?”

“Yeah,” Tucker said. “I think...I think we just need to...get everything out. It might help.”

Wash was silent for a while, then said “have him meet me and you later today, after dinner. We can talk then.”

Tucker nodded, feeling a little better. At least they’d get it done today. “Sounds good. Thanks.”

“Mmm,” Wash said, and looked forward.

Tucker did the same, watching the wind shift the tops of the trees as they headed into the jungle containing the trail that would take them back to headquarters.

 

* * *

 

Wash spent the rest of his day trying to keep his mind occupied. Talking about Maine had brought up more pain than he had expected. And though it hadn’t been much, it was still enough for him to actively try to bury it under other tasks. Right now, the walk around headquarters that accompanied being on patrol was helping a little bit. Though Wash found his gaze constantly drifting over to Tucker, who had apparently been assigned to the same shift. Not that he was bothered by this, though he had taken notice of the way Tucker kept glancing over at him, like he had something to say. Wash hoped it had more to do with Caboose than Maine.

“So, uh, are you doing okay?”

_Damnit, he’s going to bring up Maine, isn’t he?_ Wash thought. “I’m fine, Tucker.”

“You sure? Because you seemed a little weird when you talked about Maine.”

_There it is._ “I’m fine. Really. I just...reopened some old wounds for the sake of saying goodbye, I guess,” Wash replied, narrowing his eyes under his helmet. “Nothing that won’t heal in a few days. I’ll be okay.”

“Okay,” Tucker said, not sounding convinced, but getting the message that this wasn’t a conversation Wash wanted to have at the moment. “So… Caboose.”

Wash sighed. “Yep.”

“What are we going to say to him?”

“I don’t...know if he understands that Epsilon is gone,” Wash said, looking over at him.

“Yeah, I don’t either,” Tucker said, staring at the ground. “It sucks too, because you _know_ he’s gonna be difficult if we bring it up.”

Wash just nodded and looked ahead down the trail. “The longer we wait, the harder it’ll be though. I just...hoped that burying that armor would be enough to...I guess make reality set in for him.”

“When are we going to talk to him?”

“I was thinking after this,” Wash replied. “We’ll grab a shower and change into civvies and meet him somewhere quiet.”

“Will Carolina be there?” Tucker asked.

“I think she...probably wants time to herself,” Wash replied. She usually did whenever something took an emotional toll on her.

“Gotcha.”

Wash just nodded and kept following the trail. As their patrol came to an end, the two dropped off their weapons and hit the showers before Wash reached out to Caboose to pinpoint his location. He couldn’t help but feel a pang of worry when Caboose informed him that he was back at their team’s quarters. _What are you doing there?_ Wash thought, glancing over at Tucker, a hand still pressed to the comm in his ear. “Alright Caboose, stay put. Tucker and I are going to join you, okay?”

“What’s wrong?” Tucker asked.

“He’s back at our living quarters,” Wash replied, allowing his hand to drop to his side and shaking his head. “I thought he had other things to do today.”

“Maybe he got them done fast?” Tucker suggested, pulling his shoes out of his locker. Then added “yeah, wow, that was a stupid thing to say. But why are you worried?”

“Because if he’s neglecting his duties, it could be a sign that his grief for Epsilon is getting to him,” Wash replied, slinging the damp towel he had used to dry off after his shower over his shoulder.

“I’m sure Grey would _love_ that,” Tucker replied, sitting down on the bench next to where Wash was standing and yanking on his shoes.

“Mmm,” Wash said, looking away.

“Ready when you are,” Tucker said, and when Wash looked over, he was on his feet.

“Come on,” Wash said, walking towards the locker room exit. “Let’s get this over with.”

The walk back to their quarters was short, but it was enough time for worry to settle in Wash’s stomach. And by the time him and Tucker reached the door to their team’s living space, he had already run through a thousand different scenarios in his head.

Taking a deep breath, he stepped inside, startled to see the lights were out. His eyes immediately went towards Caboose’s bed, where his teammate was sitting cross-legged with a coloring book in his lap that Donut had given him a while ago.

“Hey Caboose,” Wash said hesitantly, slowly making his way over to him.

“Oh, hi Agent Washingtub! Hi Tucker!” Caboose greeted, eyes brightening when he saw the two of them.

“What are you working on?” Wash asked.

“It’s a drawing! You wanna see?” Caboose replied, uncrossing his legs and swinging them over the side of the bed and standing, holding the coloring book up so Wash could see it.

It was a drawing of what might have been some sort of spaceship, though Wash couldn’t really tell, seeing as Caboose had drawn it on the inside of the back cover of the coloring book, which was covered in ads for other books in the series. “It’s nice,” Wash commented.

“Yeah, I wasn’t gonna draw today, but then Carolina said I could have the day off, so I did,” Caboose replied.

“Carolina said that?” Wash asked.

“She didn’t give anyone else a day off,” Tucker added.

“Yeah, she said she thought that maybe I wasn’t feeling good,” Caboose replied with a slight frown. “I told her I was okay but then she said I should go do something that would make me feel happy and I tried to find Sarge but he was busy so I came here and drew a spaceship instead.”

Wash exchanged a look with Tucker. Carolina hadn’t told him anything about trying to get Caboose a day off. Maybe she had noticed he hadn’t said anything at the funeral either and thought giving him some time to himself would help. Speaking of which. “Caboose, I...noticed you didn’t say anything when we buried the armor earlier,” Wash said, looking over at him. “ _Are_ you okay?”

Caboose didn’t reply right away, staring despondently at the ground. Then he looked over at Wash with a sullen expression and quietly said “he wasn’t there.”

“What do you mean?” Wash asked, eyebrows knitting together in confusion.

“Everyone was talking to Church even though he wasn’t there. He couldn’t hear them,” Caboose replied.

Wash felt his shoulders sink a little, dread settling in his stomach as he wondered if Caboose thought Epsilon might come back. “Caboose...you...you know Ep- _Church_ is gone…right?”

“Yeah,” Caboose replied. “He just didn’t say goodbye, is all. So maybe we could see him again.”

“Caboose, he’s not coming back,” Tucker said, leaning against the pole of his and Caboose’s bunk bed. “And I know you’re upset. I am too. He was my best fucking friend. But…” He trailed off and looked away, shaking his head slightly. “But we gotta accept that this time was it. Okay?”

Wash looked over at Caboose, noticing how the other man’s shoulders began to sink a little. “You still have us, Caboose,” he offered, hoping it was enough.

Caboose looked over at him sullenly. “But…”

“Wash, tell him what Grey told us,” Tucker said, looking over at him.

Wash met his gaze, then closed his eyes and let out a long sigh. “I-- Caboose...You know how Doctor Grey’s been looking at the Meta’s armor?”

“Nooooo, why?” Caboose asked.

“I thought I told-- nevermind. Look, she said that Church...was really gone for good,” Wash said. “Like….as in he’s _dead.”_

“Well I know _that,”_ Caboose replied.

And Wash froze in disbelief, and he exchanged a look with Tucker. “You...do?”

“Well _yeah._ You’re not really supposed to bury people who are still alive. Unless you’re at the beach,” Caboose replied. “Yeah, Kai said she did that to Grif all the time when he fell asleep, but also that he hated it because he couldn’t move and that she has a bunch of pictures of him being a sand mermaid and looking all mad and stuff.”

“So…” Wash trailed off, still trying to process the fact that Caboose _knew_ Epsilon was dead. “So then you _know_ you won’t see him again.”

“No,” Caboose replied. “I don’t know that. I think it’s probably more of a ‘maybe’ know because I know but I don’t really know.”

“Wash, I think he means like...in the afterlife or something,” Tucker said, looking over at Wash.

_Huh,_ Wash thought. He hadn’t pinned Caboose as the spiritual sort.

_“No_ I mean like _see_ see him!” Caboose exclaimed.

“Can you...elaborate?” Wash asked.

“Like…” Caboose frowned, staring down at his hands as he fidgeted with a plastic-bead bracelet he had on his wrist that Wash deduced was likely made by Donut. “Like you know how Miss Fox isn’t here anymore, but Miss Kimball and you and Agent Carolina can all see her sometimes? And even though I really really miss her, even though we didn’t get to hang out a whole lot, I know I could maybe see her too again if I asked Miss Kimball really nicely? It’s like that.”

Wash blinked, crossing his arms, trying to understand what Caboose meant. “So you mean...In a video of some sort?”

Caboose nodded vigorously. “Yeah! Except he’s not on Earth like Miss Fox is…” He trailed off, frowning. But then his expression changed and he looked back at Wash with a small smile. “But that doesn’t mean he’s gone forever! We still have him! He’s just not here right now!”

Wash looked over at Tucker, noticing the sad expression on his face. “That’s...that’s right, Caboose. Well, sorta.”

“You mean that...just because he’s not...with us anymore…” Tucker swallowed hard and looked away, not finishing his sentence.

And Wash remembered what Delta had told him in reference to Epsilon several years ago. And he couldn’t help but allow a small grin to appear on his face at the bitter irony of it all. Memory had been the key to kickstarting that whole fiasco with Epsilon and Alpha and the Meta and everything else that had led him to the Reds and Blues. And now, a memory was all that was left of him. “As long as we remember him, he’ll stay with us,” he said, looking over at Tucker, then to Caboose. “You’re right, Caboose. He’s not... _really_ gone, as long as we don’t forget him.”

Caboose met his gaze with a big grin, exclaiming “yes!” then, more quietly, he added “can we hug now?”

“Fuck,” Tucker said, and Wash caught him swiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “Fuck it. Group hug. Let’s go.” He turned to Caboose and opened his arms wide.

Caboose immediately wrapped him in a bear hug that nearly lifted him off the ground, then looked over at Wash and said, “come on Agent Washingtub!” and held out an arm to him.

Wash sighed, then stepped into the hug, awkwardly wrapping one arm around Caboose and the other around Tucker.

Beside him, Tucker sniffled, the sound muffled by Caboose’s shirt, and said “you’re all a bunch of assholes, you know that?” He pulled away and looked up at Caboose, then over at Wash, and added “but I’m really glad I have you. Even if you all suck sometimes.”

Wash, unsure what to say, simply gave him a small smile and a nod.

“Can we go to the movie night now?” Caboose asked quietly. “Donut’s playing that one movie with the video game guy that goes to other video games and is sad and stuff until he makes friends.”

Wash sighed. “Only if you promise not to get scared this time.”

“Okay.”

 

* * *

 

“I heard you took on Caboose’s workload today,” Kimball said, sitting down next to Carolina on the rocky outcrop that overlooked the jungle near the satellites Grey had set up for Fox.

“What are you doing up here?” Carolina asked, choosing not to respond to Kimball’s earlier comment.

Kimball looked away and, in an amused voice, said “a little bird told me that you like to come up here when you need time to think.”

“Is that little bird named Wash?” Carolina asked flatly.

“Mmm,” Kimball replied, not looking at her.

Carolina sighed and uncrossed her legs, allowing them to dangle in open space off the ledge. “Today was a...difficult day,” she admitted. “For all of us.”

Kimball looked back at her. “I’m sorry. I… know what you’re going through. I’ve lost family too.”

Carolina nodded absently, looking out over the jungle below. “Thank you.”

“How are you doing?”

“You’re worried about me?” Carolina asked, looking over at Kimball.

Kimball just shrugged, then pulled off her helmet, setting it down beside her. “You’re my friend. And you just buried someone who was essentially family. So yes, I’m worried about you.”

“You don’t have to be. I’ll be fine,” Carolina said, wishing the subject would change. She _hated_ it when people worried about her.

“I know you’ll be fine,” Kimball said. “You always are. It’s getting there that’s the hard part.”

“You’ve been hanging out with Grey, haven’t you?” Carolina asked, a smile forming on her lips under her helmet.

Kimball let out a laugh. “Is it that obvious?”

“You’re starting to sound like her.”

“Oh Jesus, don’t tell me that! Next I’ll start singing opera while performing organ transplants!” Kimball exclaimed.

“Careful, you might drop Wash like a fly if he learns there’s _another_ Grey to worry about,” Carolina joked.

“Well we don’t want that,” Kimball said.

Carolina just chuckled and looked out over the canopy below. She was silent for a moment, then said “I thought he needed some time to himself.”

“Sorry?”

“You asked me why I took on Caboose’s duties for today,” Carolina said, looking over at her. “Church was his best friend, and I don’t think he ever really understood that Epsilon wasn’t the same person because they were so similar. I figured he needed time to mourn.”

“Ah,” Kimball said, looking away. “Well I hope it wasn’t too much work for you to take on alone.”

“I got everything done. You can check the logs,” Carolina told her, pulling off her helmet and setting it in her lap. She shook out her hair and said “besides, work keeps my head clear.”

Kimball nodded turning her eyes towards the horizon. “So Donut set up a movie night, apparently. Are you going to that?”

“No interest.”

“Why not?”

“I have better things to do.”

“Like sit on the edge of a cliff?” Kimball asked, and when Carolina looked over, there was a teasing smile on the other woman’s face.

Carolina rolled her eyes at her. “I wasn’t planning on staying here long.”

“I see,” Kimball said, sounding amused.

Carolina was silent for a moment, then said “thank you...for checking in on me. It..it means a lot.”

“Do you want to talk?” Kimball asked.

“I…” Carolina trailed off, thinking. “The armor we buried today belonged to Agent Maine, from Project Freelancer. He was a friend of mine.”

“Ah,” Kimball said, leaning back a little. “I heard a bit about that through the grapevine.”

“I figured,” Carolina said. “He died a long time ago. And Wash was much closer than him than I was. It’s just…” She leaned forward, a frown on her face. “That part of our lives just doesn’t seem to want to go away. I’m glad that we got a chance to bury what we had left of Maine, but I’m also frustrated that it came back to us in the first place. The armor, I mean. It’s nice closure, but Wash and I had already gotten over it.” She let out a frustrated sigh and stared down at her helmet. “This was just an old wound that got picked open again for no reason.”

Kimball nodded absently, not looking at her. “I’m sorry. And I’m sorry you lost a friend because of it.”

“Me too,” Carolina said.

And the two of them fell silent for a while, listening to the breeze rustle through the trees behind them as the clouds moved overhead, chasing the horizon. And for a moment, Carolina allowed herself to get lost in it.

Then Kimball spoke up, asking “you know how I always say that we’re fighting for a better tomorrow?”

Carolina looked over at her. “Yes?”

Kimball stared out across the landscape below and said “our past is always going to be a big part of who we are. _Especially_ here, with everything that’s happened. It’s never really going to let us go. But...I like to think that we can come back from this and move forward from it.” She met Carolina’s gaze with a small smile. “What I’m trying to say is, I don’t think it matters where you came from or how you started out. Or if that foundation keeps chasing you down. As long as you keep moving and trying to grow from it, you’ll wind up with people who will help you the next time it catches up.” Her smile faded slightly, and she continued “I’m sorry that what you went through keeps coming back. You don’t deserve that. But you have people who want to help you get through it now, and they’ll be there for you next time too.”

“I wish there didn’t have to _be_ a next time,” Carolina said a little bitterly.

“I don’t either,” Kimball agreed, reaching over and putting a hand on her shoulder. “But I’ll be here for you if or when it does.”

Carolina met her gaze, gratitude pushing some of the white noise out of her head. “How long have you had that little speech prepared?” she asked with a lopsided grin.

Kimball pulled her hand back and laughed. “What, you think I plan something good to say for every occasion?”

“Sometimes it sounds like you do,” Carolina admitted.

_“Psh,_ I’m pretty sure that’s just a product of how I say things,” Kimball said amusedly. “But if we’re being honest here, I got inspiration from that little speech you gave _me_ not too long ago when I was still tied up about trusting Fox.”

“That wasn’t a speech!”

“Then what would you call it?” Kimball asked teasingly.

Carolina reached out and gave her a playful shove with one hand and looked away. “Improv,” she replied.

“Oh jeeze, you weren’t a theater kid, were you?”

“I’m not _that_ weird, am I?”

Kimball laughed. “No. Not really.”

Carolina didn’t say anything, but allowed a smile to settle on her face. She stayed like that for a moment, then turned to Kimball and asked “so...do you have any other plans for tonight?”

Kimball shook her head. “I was actually thinking about trying to relax a little bit in good company.”

“So you’re heading back, then?” Carolina asked, feeling a little disappointed.

Kimball turned her head and met her gaze with a smile. “Actually, I think I can meet that goal staying right here, if it’s all the same to you.”

And Carolina felt something flutter in her chest, but she choked it down and said “works for me.”

And the two of them stayed like that, watching the sun sink towards the horizon, listening to the sounds of the wildlife that had begun to return to their homes in the wake of war.

 

* * *

 

_“Gooooood_ morning!”

Locus met Fox’s bubbly greeting with a nod as he walked past her and headed over to the coffee pot. He poured himself a cup and took a sip of it, eyes on the array of holographic windows floating above the kitchen island. “What are you working on?”

“So y’know how Carson is going to step down and hand Emblem over to me? Well he made the official announcement to the U.N.S.C. about an hour ago.”

“So...paperwork?” Locus clarified.

“A _lot_ of paperwork,” Fox replied. “But I’ve managed to get a good head-start. Plus, now that I’ve got that retinal scan verified, I can use Marz to cheat and just have her fill out most of the easy repetitive stuff.”

“It took a retinal scan for her to do that?” Locus asked dubiously.

“Well, I couldn’t ask her to access my file and put stuff down for me. Everything she’s accomplished up until a week and a half ago was because she got help from Abigale or Charlie to bypass certain protocols,” Fox explained, reaching up and swiping one of the windows away, causing it to disappear from view.

_“That’s right, don’t give the sentient supercomputer any credit. It’s not like she has feelings too,”_ Marz said flatly.

“Marz you only have like _two_ feelings at any given time. Don’t start that with me,” Fox replied with a wry grin on her face, eyes on the array in front of her.

_“Recent updates allowed me to allocate enough space for three now, actually.”_

Locus rolled his eyes. In the past few weeks of being on Earth, he had learned to tune Marz out. Or try to, at least. Part of him wondered why the U.N.S.C. had adopted such a mouthy AI. Then again, they didn’t exactly have the best track record of judgement calls as of late. “So what’s the plan for today?” he asked, looking over at Fox.

“Well I was going to try to finish as much of this as I could,” Fox replied, nodding at the array. “I’m expecting Carson to call me to plan a meeting and a press release and all that fun jazz probably sometime today. And then over the next few days, I’m going to go through the transfer process and get sworn in and a bunch of other stuff.”

That sounded like a lot. Locus couldn’t help but feel a little stressed on her behalf. “Is there anything I can do?”

Fox looked past the array and raised an eyebrow at him. _“You_ wanna help?”

“The sooner it’s done, the sooner we can focus on what we were sent here to do.”

“Fair enough, but it should only take a few days. I’m sure Kimball won’t mind.”

Locus figured as much, but a few days of doing nothing but paperwork was a few days Hargrove was getting a break. “Is there anything you can have the rest of the team do?”

Fox sighed and leaned back in her seat. “Maybe…” she said, staring at the center of the kitchen island thoughtfully and tapping a finger against her chin. Then she unwound herself a bit and looked over at him. “We got Siris on our team because he knew you. Maybe some of the others have connections that could help us out too.”

It was a start, but Locus couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed. He had been hoping for something a little more...proactive. “Anything else?”

“You want a mission, don’t you?” Fox asked, an amused, knowing half-smile on her face.

“We need to keep the pressure on the chairman,” Locus replied evenly.

“True, but I don’t think Kimball would be to happy if she found out I sent you and the boys out in the field without my supervision.”

Locus felt his hand tighten around the handle of his coffee mug involuntarily when she said that, and he looked away, frustrated.

Fox must have noticed, because she then said “maybe we could do some team-building exercises a little later? I’ll wait until Carson reaches out to me to get an idea of what kind of load I need to take on, then I can make some plans. How’s that sound?”

_It’s better than nothing,_ Locus thought. “Fine,” he said, looking back at her.

“Everything’s gonna be okay,” Fox said soothingly, then looked back at the array and asked “Marz, could you reach out and ask the others if they have any contacts that might be useful to us?”

_“Any emojis you’d like me to add?”_

_“No_ emojis. Also make a groupchat for me and add everyone to it.”

_“Done. You want fries with that?”_

“Thank you, Marz.”

Locus finished his coffee while he listened to their conversation and turned and put the empty mug in the dishwasher. As he closed the door to it, his phone buzzed and he pulled it out of his pocket, accepting the invitation to the group chat that showed up on his screen. A few seconds later a message appeared.

[ **_User10937:_ ** _hey sluts, check ur contacts and see if u know any1 who can help us fuck Hargrove’s shit UP. kthnxbai <3 _]

“Marz,” came the world-weary sigh from Fox, who set her phone down on the counter before burying her face in her hands. “I donate to charity, I don’t take tax cuts, I’ve devoted my life to helping other people, so _why?_ What did I do to deserve this?”

_“You left me alone for over a decade.”_

“You’re a terrible person,” Fox said, dropping her hands into her lap and glaring at the kitchen island.

_“It runs in the family.”_

Locus ignored their bickering and looked down at his phone as it buzzed to indicate another message had been sent into the groupchat.

[ **_User10483:_ ** _I actually know someone who might be able to help us_ ]

[ **_User10483:_ ** _This is Siris btw_ ]

“Ooooh!” Fox cooed excitedly, picking up her phone and typing a response.

[ **_User10937:_ ** _Yo gimme deets_ ]

“This is going to get _very_ confusing,” Locus said, looking at the two current usernames in the chat.

“What do you mean?” Fox asked, looking up at him.

“The usernames,” Locus replied.

“Oh! Yeah, _right?_ You’d think they’d have us set them the minute we made our accounts,” Fox agreed.

_“That might have been my fault,”_ Marz admitted. _“I went with the default options when adding all of you to the chat.”_

“Oh well,” Fox replied. “It’ll give us a chance to pick our own. Speaking of which…” She looked down at her phone and started typing. A moment later, another message appeared in the chat.

[ **_User10937:_ ** _Also everyone change ur usernames when u got a mo pls_ ]

[ **_User10483:_ ** _Will do._ ]

[ **_User10483:_ ** _Girl’s name is Latoya Pierce. She used to be a pilot. I think she’s a marine. She lives just outside of the city_ ]

[ **_User10483:_ ** _K_ ]

Locus looked up when Fox said “hey Marz, run the name Latoya Pierce and cross-ref it with the info Siris gave us.”

_“Will do. Hold on,”_ Marz replied.

“Don’t we already have a pilot?” Locus asked, recalling the list of candidates that Marz had pulled up a while ago.

“Yeah, but group chemistry is also important, and Siris still seems a little shaky about this whole thing. I think it might benefit him if he had someone he knows and...trusts a little more...on his team,” Fox explained, cringing a little towards the end.

Locus just sighed. “Understandable.”

_“Okay, so everything Siris said checks out. Though there’s some stuff in her file that’s locked for some reason,”_ Marz said, sounding perplexed.

Locus blinked up at the overhead speaker, frowning, then looked over at Fox and raised an eyebrow.

Fox gave him an ‘I don’t know’ expression and shrugged, then said “can you get access to it?”

_“Yeah. But it looks like it was locked by the U.N.S.C. itself.”_

“So...defer to Sachs for access,” Fox replied slowly. “It’ll probably be safer if we do this the legal way.”

_“Ugh, that’ll take so long though!”_

“Hey, it’s not like we’ve set up a time to meet her yet. There’s no actual rush. And we don’t need a pilot right away anyways,” Fox said.

Locus listened as she said this, texting a message to Siris asking _[When can Pierce meet with us?]_

A moment later, Siris texted back _[Let me check. Hold on.]_

“I’ve got Siris checking in for a time to meet Pierce,” Locus announced, looking back up at Fox.

She brightened up at that, looking surprised. “Oh! Thanks!” Then she looked down at her phone with a frown. “We should change these usernames before more people start replying with leads, huh?”

Locus didn’t say anything, but met her gaze.

“Thanks for your input,” Fox said flatly, then started typing on her phone again.

When it buzzed, Locus looked at his own phone, noting the message she had written with some amusement.

[ **_User10937:_ ** _OK everyone change their usernames real quick pls_ ]

[ **_User10937:_ ** _Try to keep them close to ur real codenames_ ]

[ **_User10937:_ ** _No shit like superwholockinthetardis unless u want me to PERSONALLY kill u_ ]

“This will be interesting,” Locus commented, looking over at Fox.

“We’re about to get a taste of everyone’s sense of humor,” Fox replied, still typing.

Locus didn’t say anything, but looked down at his phone when he received a notification from the group chat.

[ **_User10937_** _has changed their username to_ ** _FoxNews_** ]

Locus let out a long sigh, making eye contact with Fox, who grinned cheekily at him, then he typed his response into the chat.

[ **_User10462:_ ** _Really?_ ]

“Did you _seriously_ just text me while I’m in the same room as you?” Fox asked, laughing.

Locus was about to respond when his phone buzzed again, and he checked the chat.

[ **_FoxNews:_ ** _shut up let me live._ ]

“Hypocrite,” he muttered, looking over at Fox, whose grin had only gotten wider. Locus just shook his head and looked down at his phone when Siris texted him back. “Siris says we can meet her Friday around noon.”

“Pierce, you mean?”

“Yes,” Locus replied, scrolling through the notifications from the group chat on his phone, feeling his social battery starting to drain already.

[ **_User10483_** _has changed their username to_ ** _Siris77_** ]

[ **_Siris77:_ ** _you should have let the white kid take that one._ ]

[ **_User11358_** _has changed their username to_ ** _PopitRockit_** ]

[ **_PopitRockit:_ ** _nah I like this one better_ ]

[ **_User12452_** _has changed their username to_ ** _JerseyBoiii_** ]

[ **_User11253_** _has changed their username to_ ** _BeardBear_** ]

“Hey nerd, change your username,” Fox said.

Locus just gave her an annoyed look. “I’ll think about it,” he replied, knowing full well he wouldn’t. “Does that time work? Siris is still waiting on a reply.”

Fox looked up at him. “Huh? Oh, yeah that works,” she said a little absently, then turned and held her phone up to her ear. “Hyello Carson! I’m great, yourself? That’s good.”

Locus watched as she hopped out of the barstool and started pacing on the other side of the island, listening intently.

“Tomorrow in the evening? Five-ish? Yes-- no that’s perfect! Yeah, I’ll be there.” Fox stopped and looked over at the interface being projected above the kitchen island for a second before turning her gaze to the floor. “I’ve got most of it done. By midnight _tonight?”_ Her expression turned incredulous. “Yeah, no, I can get it _done._ Yeah, no, don’t worry! I just thought I had more time, but no problem, I have no plans.” She turned back to face Locus and mouthed “kill me,” before turning away again and saying “yeah, yeah. I’ll get them in. Is there anything else I’ll need to bring in, or? That’s it? Got it. Cool. Alright, well, I’ll see you tomorrow then. Thanks for the update. Bye!” The second she hung up, Fox’s expression went from one of feigned pleasantry to frustration. “I’m going to fight the entire U.N.S.C. in an alleyway behind a shitty Irish pub,” she huffed, dragging herself back to the barstool and depositing herself in it.

“What’s wrong?” Locus asked, tilting his head slightly.

“You heard most of it,” Fox replied, pulling up a holographic keyboard above the island in front of her and beginning to type. “The U.N.S.C. changed the deadline for me to get all of _this_ in to midnight tonight. For whatever reason. And I’m going to be meeting with Carson tomorrow at five to be officially sworn in.”

“So the timeline has been shortened?” Locus asked.

“Yeah, and that’s good for Kimball, but bad for my mental health. Now I’m stressed. Great,” Fox replied, then muttered to herself “I should’ve gone to that pilates class this morning.”

Locus watched her work for a short while until he got bored, then asked “I know I already asked, but is there any way I can help?”

“Answer hasn’t changed,” Fox replied.

He hadn’t expected it to, but it still felt wrong not to offer. “Then what should I do?”

“What do you normally do on a day off?”

Locus frowned and stared at the floor for a moment before looking back at her. He really didn’t want to take the day off. They had just gotten started, and things were still going so slow. It was frustrating. He wanted to start seeing results, but they hadn’t gotten to a place where he’d get any yet.

He thought for a moment, trying to come up with _something_ to keep him occupied. He thought about asking Fox to see his file, mostly out of curiosity. He wanted to know what she knew. But after a quick reflection, he figured it would only bring up bad memories. It occurred to him, however, that he hadn’t yet seen the video where that Charon representative reached out to Fox. Even though he already knew what was on it, it couldn’t hurt to see for himself. “Do you still have the video from Charon?”

“Of Katrina, you mean?” Fox asked, looking up from her work.

“Yes.”

“Yeah, I got it. Want me to pull it up?”

Locus nodded.

“Alright, gimme a sec.” She minimized a few windows and pulled up a new one, typing a file name into the search bar and clicking on the first result. She then pulled the window out of the holographic array and slid it across the kitchen island towards him, where it popped up on the edge of it in front of him. “There you go. Just tap it to play,” Fox said, then resumed her work.

Locus tapped the video, watching through narrowed eyes as it began to play. He let it run for a few seconds before he paused it, the gears in his mind turning as he stared at the woman’s face. He could have _sworn_ she looked familiar. “Can this be forwarded to Siris?” he asked, eyes still on the video.

“Uh...why?” Fox asked.

Locus looked over at her and met her confused look. “There’s just something I want to check on.”

“I’m gonna need more details than that,” Fox replied.

“Just trust me,” Locus said.

“You don’t need to ask me to do that,” Fox replied. “And yeah. I guess. You can send him the video. Marz, could you put it on his phone?”

_“Done,”_ Marz replied.

Locus looked at his phone, and hit the send button under the file attachment window in his text conversation with Siris. He watched the file buffer for a moment before popping up in the message thread. Then he wrote _[is this who I think it is?]_

“Okay, so why the theatrics?” Fox asked.

Locus looked over at her. “What?”

“That was awful dramatic of you. Being all ‘just trust me’ and not telling me what’s going on,” Fox said, cracking a half-grin before picking up the glass of water next to her phone and taking a sip.

“I think I know her,” Locus replied, nodding at the video.

Fox made a choking sound and slammed the glass down before doubling over nearly out of view behind the island, coughing violently. Several seconds later, she straightened up with reddened eyes that snapped to meet his as she exclaimed _“what?!”_

Locus glanced to the side then met her gaze, a little off-put by the fact that he had nearly killed her just then. “The woman in the video,” he replied cautiously, not wanting to trigger another life-threatening reaction from her. “I think I know her.”

Fox wiped the tears out of her eyes and took a deep breath, then clapped her hands together and pointed at him with them. “You know a _Charon representative?”_

“That’s why I wanted to send the video to Siris,” Locus explained. “To see if she’s the person I think she is.”

Fox sighed and buried her face in her hands. “Okay,” she said, folding her arms on the top of the island. “Who is she?”

“I don’t remember her name, but it’s not Katrina,” Locus replied.

Fox blinked, then said “Marz, run a search on a Katrina Holtzman who’s a representative for Charon Industries.”

_“One sec.”_

“Okay say Marz tells us Holtzman isn’t a real person. _Who_ are we dealing with here?” Fox asked.

“She was someone we used to correspond with occasionally for inside jobs back when Felix, Siris, and I worked together as bounty hunters,” Locus replied, crossing his arms.

“So what, she was a face-shifter?”

“That’s not a real thing,” Locus replied flatly.

“Language is just a bunch of sounds thrown together and given meaning,” Fox shot back.

Locus just shook his head, deciding it wasn’t worth the argument. “She used to gather intel from inside an organization or gang and sell it to bounty hunters while also playing the part of a member of whatever group she was infiltrating.”

“So a double-agent. She goes in, double-crosses a group, then changes her face and name and moves onto the next target.”

“Exactly.”

“So a face-shifter,” Fox said smugly.

“Stop,” Locus growled.

Fox stuck her tongue out at him, then said “so then what’s her deal if she reached out to us? Do you think she’s collaborating with that Snow character?”

“Maybe. I don’t know,” Locus mused, looking away. “She was still in contact with us for a while after Felix and I left Earth, but then fell off the grid.”

“Maybe she fell in with the wrong people,” Fox suggested.

“Maybe,” Locus said.

_“And the results are in!”_ Marz chimed suddenly. _“Katrina Holtzman, age forty-two, has been a representative of Charon Industries for the past few months. Went to school for business at some dinky in-state college. Came in from Io a few days after you two arrived.”_

“So she checks out,” Fox said thoughtfully.

_“Maybe. The one thing that’s weird is that she doesn’t have any photos or videos of her at_ **_all._ ** _No selfies, no vlogs, nothing that she’s been tagged in. And there’s no facial rec scans logged for her either.”_

Fox narrowed her eyes and said “pull up her file.”

_“Done-zo.”_

The array in front of Fox minimized as Marz pulled up Katrina’s profile. Curious, Locus walked around the kitchen island to stand next to Fox as she quickly looked over the information Marz had sent her.

“This is really weird,” Fox said quietly, then looked over her shoulder at him and asked, “have you heard back from Siris?”

Locus checked his phone, then replied “no. He’s probably driving his daughter to school.”

“Neat,” Fox said, frowning. “Let me know when he gets back to you.”

“Will do,” Locus said, watching as Fox went through the profile. “A lot of the information in there seems very convenient.”

“Yeah, but coincidences _do_ happen. The real red flag is the lack of imagery,” Fox said.

“Do all profiles have picture and video documentation in them?” Locus asked, unsure if he really wanted an answer.

“Uh, yeah,” Fox replied, looking back at him and an unreadable expression on her face. “It’s for facial rec and stuff. So surveillance systems can identify subjects if there’s like, a terrorist attack or something.” She looked away and said “It’s also good for instances like this, where someone might potentially be trying to catfish the government.”

“Right,” Locus said, not sure how he felt about knowing he was being watched.

“Yeah, it’s creepy,” Fox said. “But there’s good intent behind it. Siris say anything yet?”

Locus checked his phone, frowning when he saw the message he’d been sent.

_ <[ Holy shit.] _

“Yes,” Locus replied.

“And?”

“Hold on,” Locus said, typing a response. _[Do we know her?]_

_ <[I think so? She looks like] _

_ <[Fuck. Her name started with a V] _

_[First or last?]_ Locus replied.

_ <[First. Her last name was Nicolaides. Like the wine brand.] _

Locus stared at his phone screen for a moment, thinking hard. Then it hit him, and he quickly texted back _[Her code name was Valentine, wasn’t it?]_

_ <[Valerie. Holy shit. Her name was Valerie.] _

_ <[Didn’t her and Felix have a thing?] _

_[I wouldn’t know. I never paid attention] > _

_ <[Is Fox with you? Have her look her up.] _

_ <[And get back to me. She just fell off the map. I’ve been wondering what happened to her.] _

_[Will do.]_ Locus replied, and pocketed his phone, saying “I was right. Siris and I know her. Her name is Valerie Nicolaides.”

“Huh,” Fox said.

_“Spell it for me,”_ Marz requested.

Locus did so, looking over at Fox when she asked “did she know you and Felix were working for Charon?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Locus replied. “But I also feel like she would have reached out to us for intel if she did.”

“Hmmm,” Fox mused, looking over when a new profile appeared in front of her.

_“Valerie Nicolaides. Also age forty-two. Graduated from Stanford with a business degree. Enlisted as a Marine during the war. Served as a recon specialist until the end of the war. After that, she moved into a high-end apartment in this here city and somehow managed to afford all_ **_kinds_ ** _of expensive things despite working as a secretary for a law firm._ **_Almost_ ** _like she had another source of income that wasn’t recorded anywhere,”_ Marz spoke up.

“What _kind_ of expensive things?” Fox asked.

_“Yeezy,”_ Marz replied.

“Yuck.”

_“But wait, there’s more. Here’s a picture!”_ Marz exclaimed, pulling up an image of Valerie.

“Coooool,” Fox said flatly, crossing her arms. “I got duped by a jackass from _Stanford.”_

“According to Siris, Felix and her might have been in a relationship,” Locus added.

“Could she have found out you guys were with Charon that way?” Fox asked.

“Unlikely. We lost contact with her before then. As far as I’m aware.”

“It doesn’t really matter,” Fox said, waving a hand dismissively. “It might help us figure out what she wants, but it’s not a game changer.”

“Are we considering her a threat?” Locus asked.

“Is that going to be a problem?” Fox countered.

“No.”

“Great. And yeah, she’s a threat. Until she proves herself otherwise,” Fox said, turning back to the holo projection and pulling up the array again. “Now I have some work to do, and a report that I gotta file to Kimball about all of this. Why don’t you go get your car from your place? Haven’t you been meaning to do that?”

_Right,_ Locus thought, remembering that he’d planned on doing that shortly after they arrived on Earth, but got sidetracked with other things. “I’ll do that,” he said, turning and heading to his room to get his keys and throw on some shoes. He paused a moment on his way back into the hallway, looking at the stacks of construction paper in the cubby above the desk, and deciding he’d stop at the store to pick up a few things on his way back.

“I’ll pick up the taxi fare,” Fox said as he walked past her on his way out.

Locus simply nodded in response before stepping out and making his way to the elevator. On the way down, he checked his phone, then quickly typed up a summary of what he and Fox had found out to Siris. Then he pulled up the app to call for a ride and stepped out of the elevator and into the lobby to wait, his mind running through every instance of contact him and Felix had with Valerie, growing frustrated when he couldn’t recall anything useful to their current situation. Fox was swamped with work and here he was waiting for a taxi. Letting out a sigh, Locus looked over as the cab pulled up to the sidewalk in front of the building.

At least this gave him something to do.

 

* * *

 

[ 9:32 pm ]

[ **_FoxNews:_ ** _psst_ @User10462 _u should change ur username_ ]

[ **_User10462:_ ** _I haven’t thought of anything yet._ ]

[ **_JerseyBoiii:_ ** _booooo_ ]

[ **_BeardBear:_ ** _you should do something like_ ]

[ **_BeardBear:_ ** _wait fuck nvm I can’t say that_ ]

[ **_BeardBear:_ ** _you’ll kill me_ ]

[ **_User10462:_ ** _…_ ]

[ **_JerseyBoiii:_ ** _is it what I think it is?_ ]

[ **_BeardBear:_ ** _yeah_ ]

[ **_FoxNews:_ ** _you kids better behave_ ]

[ **_JerseyBoiii:_ ** _srry mom_ ]

[ **_User10462:_** @JerseyBoiii @BeardBear _what is it?_ ]

[ **_JerseyBoiii:_ ** _Griz this one’s on you_ ]

[ **_PopitRockit:_ ** _I don’t think I like where this is going_ ]

[ **_BeardBear:_ ** @User10462 _I was gonna say change ur username to XBox_ ]

[ **_FoxNews:_ ** _FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF_ ]

[ **_BeardBear:_ ** _I am SO sorry_ ]

[ **_BeardBear:_ ** _that was in terrible taste. I’ll see myself out._ ]

[ **_Siris77:_ ** _I feel really bad for laughing at that_ ]

[ **_User10462:_ ** _If it makes you feel any better, it’s not the first time I’ve heard that._ ]

[ **_JerseyBoiii:_** _holy fuk_ ]

[ **_User10462:_ ** _I’m still not changing my username to that though._ ]

[ **_FoxNews:_ ** _lame_ ]

 

* * *

 

_“Welcome back, folks. I’m Dale Harper here with your Monday evening report returning you now to what’s certainly a historic moment for the software company, Emblem, as the torch of leadership is finally handed off. For those of you just tuning in now, the now former CEO of the company just gave his resignation speech and announced his successor, Pepper Matsukaze, the daughter of Hiro Matsukaze, his best friend and the man who helped him start Emblem. I’m now going to send you over to Nancy Phelps, who we have on the ground over at Emblem’s headquarters in Boston. Thank you Nance.”_

_“It’s a brave new day over here at Emblem’s corporate headquarters as CEO Leroy Carson officially steps down. The decision was made shortly after the company’s Vice President, Pepper Matsukaze, daughter of Hiro Matsukaze, one of the founders of Emblem, returned to Earth after an extended period of study off-planet. She left Earth nearly a_ decade _ago to study biomechanical engineering; something she says is an important field to understand, as it will help Emblem grow as a company._

_“Since it first started, Emblem has largely been a software company, making programs for use in military equipment and machinery. However, over the past seven years, the company has begun focusing on producing hardware, creating massive strides in holographic technology. When asked what sort of future she expected for the company, Miss Matsukaze had this to say:”_

“Emblem was created in a time of intergalactic political tension, with large-scale focus on technology that would give us an edge in times of war. However, with peace treaties having been signed and diplomatic activities underway, I think it’s important that we work to bolster the new relationships we have formed, and create technology that will keep that peace and offer benefits to everyone who uses it.”

_“She then went on to announce future plans to begin creating technology to aid civilians in rebuilding efforts taking place on colony planets, as well as a massive donation of four and a half_ **_billion_ ** _dollars by the company to those same relief and reconstruction efforts. Despite this, social media response to her stepping into the leadership role at Emblem has been a mixed bag, with numerous users citing the fact that her father was friends with the Charon Industries chairman, Malcolm Hargrove. Miss Matsukaze has yet to speak up about her father’s relationship with the chairman, but regardless of where she stands on the matter, she has a long way to go to fill Carson’s shoes. This is Nancy Phelps, signing off.”_

_“Alright, thank you Nancy. Next up, rising crime rates in inner-city Boston have many people concerned, and what are the police going to do about it? This is Dale Harper with your Monday evening report, and I’ll see you again right after this commercial break!”_

 

* * *

 

“I hate press conferences,” Fox sighed, stepping into the elevator next to Carson. She turned and got a glimpse of the dispersing crowd outside through the glass front of the Emblem headquarters before the elevator doors slid shut.

“They’re a necessary part of what we do,” Carson replied, folding his arms behind his back and looking forward.

Fox watched him closely, noting how, despite the regality of his posture, he looked tired. Like he was finally allowing the exhaustion built up from running a company for so long to show. He had more than earned it, Fox thought, especially now that he was more or less officially retired. “So now what?” she asked. They had already been approved by U.N.S.C. High Command, and most of the system transfers had been completed, but Fox had a feeling she wasn’t as close to being cut loose as she thought.

“Now, we have a bit more paperwork before you officially sign on as the leader of this company,” Carson replied, looking at her out of the corner of his eye.

“Just what I had hoped for,” Fox chuckled.

Carson smiled, but said nothing.

And Fox turned her attention to the elevator doors, thinking hard. Ever since the conversation she had with Carson in the hallway after updating her retinal scan, she had been going over the pros and cons of telling him the truth. She knew he’d be angry and confused and disappointed, all things she could deal with, and knew she deserved. But she wanted to believe that if she told him the reason why she did everything she had done, he would understand. After all, he was practically family. It felt...wrong...keeping him in the dark. But the worry that she would lose the position she so desperately needed to help Chorus weighed down on her. It wasn’t so much that Carson would decide that she didn’t deserve to run Emblem that worried her as it was the idea that if somehow, some way, the U.N.S.C. learned what she was hiding that it would go after him too.

She wasn’t sure if it would be safer for him to know or not.

_What kind of person do you want to be, Pep?_ She thought, looking on as the elevator came to a stop and the doors slid open. She followed Carson as he led her to his office for the last time. She didn’t remember it being such a long walk. And at the end of it, when they stepped through Abigale’s office and into his, Fox made her choice.

“Well, here we are,” Carson said, walking over to his desk.

A quick scan of the room told Fox that all of his belongings had already been moved out. The bookshelves had been emptied, the memorabilia from his favorite sports teams taken off of the walls, the desk now bare of framed photographs and mugs filled with pens. Fox couldn’t remember a time she had felt so small in such an empty room.

“You know, your father was supposed to be the one who sat in this chair next,” Carson said.

Fox looked over at him quizzically.

Carson met her gaze with a warm smile. “Though I think you’ll fill it just fine.”

“I don’t know. I might need a booster seat or something,” Fox remarked, _trying_ to alleviate some of her tension with humor.

Carson let out a startled laugh. “I don’t know about that!” he chuckled, picking up the datapad on the desk. _Her_ desk. It was _her_ desk now. “You know, when Hiro and I started this company, I don’t think either of us expected it to become what it is today,” he said, eyes on the datapad as he fiddled with the touch screen. “Watching this place grow has been... _fascinating.”_ He turned and faced the floor-to-ceiling windows, staring out over the city below.

Fox slowly made her way over to stand beside him, listening as he continued.

“We faced a lot of challenges, and dealt with plenty of heat, but we pushed through,” Carson said, then looked over at her. “I know this is a big change for you. But don’t forget that both Hiro and I were once in the same position you were, and we came this far.”

“You didn’t have a strong foundation,” Fox replied. “I have everything you two built. It’s not the same.”

“No, but it’s similar. With current events, and the sort of people your father allowed himself to get involved with, you’ll have a shaky start,” Carson said.

And Fox felt a stab of frustration at that. How something she had no control over, that she had barely known was going on, was going to loom over her until Charon was dealt with. She had a lot of work to do. “I’ll manage.”

“I know,” Carson replied, then went silent for a while, eyes on the orange glow of the setting sun filtering through the skyscrapers. “I want you to do better than both of us,” he said finally. “Your father and I made plenty of mistakes getting Emblem to where it is today. Many of which we could never fix, and some that you may wind up facing on your own. And for that, I’m sorry.” He looked over at her and met her gaze, a serious expression on his face.

“Don’t be,” Fox said. “I’m no angel either. Believe me.”

A small smile appeared on Carson’s face, and he glanced down at the datapad in his hand. “Just as long as you stay honest and walk a straight line and keep a clear head, you’ll be fine. I’m sure, in time, you’ll impress me.” He then reached out and put a hand on her shoulder, meeting her eyes. “Do you think you can impress me?”

Fox took a deep breath, feeling her chest tighten. “Absolutely.”

And Carson’s smile grew, and he nodded in satisfaction and pulled away before offering her the datapad. “Then sign this, and the company is officially yours.”

Fox stared at the screen, eyes scanning over the fine print, then she took a deep breath and prepared herself for what came next. “There’s something you need to know before you let me sign that,” she said, nodding at the datapad in Carson’s hand.

Carson’s pleasant demeanor shifted into one of concern. “Is something wrong?”

“It’s…I haven’t been totally...honest...with you,” Fox said, cringing slightly.

Carson raised his eyebrows at her. “Oh?”

Fox bit her lip, looked away, and continued. “I wasn’t with Manning these past six years. I--”

“I know,” Carson interrupted, holding up a hand to stop her.

Fox felt the color drain from her face as she turned to stare at him, a cold shock running through her body. “W-wait, _what?!_ How?!”

“My dear, did you _really_ think Sanchez was going to keep any of this a secret?” Carson asked. “The minute you reached out to him and that General Sachs from that colony planet, he turned to me for help getting your whole little operation approved by the U.N.S.C.”

Fox’s shoulders sagged. _“Ugh,_ of _course._ I _knew_ it couldn’t have been that easy,” she huffed, then tucked her hair behind her ear and straightened up, giving Carson a curious look. “So if you knew, why not say anything?” she asked.

“Because I wanted to see what you would do,” Carson replied.

“You were testing me?” Fox asked, narrowing her eyes and allowing a wry half-smile to creep onto her face. Carson hadn’t lost his edge, it seemed.

“I wanted to see who I was handing Emblem over to,” Carson explained. “Even though I knew the sort of person you _were_ before you left on your little...adventure, I wanted to see who you’d _become.”_

“After everything I’ve been through, you mean.”

“Precisely.”

Fox looked away, resting her hands on her hips. “If anything, the stuff I went through made me feel like the biggest idiot in the universe. I got too many good people killed.”

“You simply put your eggs in the wrong basket. That happens sometimes,” Carson said. “In this case, however, it seems at least a few of them still hatched.”

Fox looked back at him, frowning. “What do you mean?”

“A little bird told me you plan on using the protocol to help that one colony planet Charon Industries has been terrorizing,” Carson replied with a knowing smile.

Fox rolled her eyes. “Marz?”

_“Well he_ **_asked!_ ** _The guy’s basically my grandpa! I couldn’t say no!”_ Marz replied indignantly, broadcasting her voice from the datapad that was now tucked under Carson’s arm.

“Pushover,” Fox muttered good-naturedly. She turned her eyes to Carson and asked. “So I take it you’re fine with me doing that?”

“You know how I feel about that chairman,” Carson replied a little grimly. “And after hearing about what he’s done, and having a good idea of how the U.N.S.C. plans on handling it, I think anything you can throw at him might buy that planet a better chance of seeing justice.”

“You don’t even know what I plan on doing,” Fox said, tilting her head slightly.

_“No, he does. I told him that too,”_ Marz piped up.

Fox sighed. “It’s going to get messy,” she said.

“True,” Carson said. “But I think you’re equipped to handle it. Just as long as you keep everything that happened with Charon a secret.”

“I’ll do my best,” Fox promised.

“You won’t have a choice,” Carson replied wryly, then grew serious. “I need you to understand that if any of what you’ve done or are _doing_ comes to light, I can’t help you. Emblem is no longer my priority, and I am in no position to use what authority came with the company to keep the U.N.S.C. off of your back. You’re on your own from this point forward.”

“I know,” Fox replied.

“Good,” Carson said with a satisfied nod. “Now if you don’t mind. My wife and I have dinner reservations to celebrate my retirement. And I won’t be able to meet her if I’m still on the clock,” he said, handing Fox the datapad.

“Right,” Fox said, taking it from him. She stared down at the screen for a moment, eyes on the signature box, certain that this had to be the heaviest datapad she’d ever held. Then with a sigh, she signed her name and handed it back to Carson. But the weight she’d felt remained, and seemed to spread throughout her entire body as she watched Carson enter a few more things before submitting the form and switching the datapad into sleep mode.

 

* * *

 

“Guess who’s officially the C-E-O!”

Locus looked over as Fox stepped through the front door of her apartment with her eyes bright, a smile on her face, and her arms spread wide in victory. “Congratulations,” he said flatly before returning his attention to the stove.

“Are you _cooking?”_ Fox asked, kicking off her heels and hanging her car keys up on the hook beside the door before wandering into the kitchen.

“Yes,” Locus replied.

“Is that a pancake?”

“It is.”

“For dinner?”

Locus gave her a look.

Fox put up her hands defensively and pulled a face. “Jeeze, you don’t have to get all ‘eurgh’ about it. I was just asking.” Then she headed over to the fridge, pulling it open and looking inside for a minute before shutting it with a sigh.

“Do you want one?” Locus asked without really thinking about it.

“What?” Fox asked, staring at him in confusion.

“A pancake. Do you want one?”

Fox blinked. _“Oh!_ Uh, sure!”

“What do you want in it?”

“Plain is fine.”

Locus just nodded in acknowledgement and pulled a plate out of one of the overhead cabinets, setting it down on the counter next to the stove and flipping the finished pancake onto it. “That one’s yours,” he said.

“You were making it for yourself though,” Fox replied.

“It’s fine,” Locus said, not really interested in an argument. He greased the pan and emptied the tupperware of batter sitting beside the stove into it, then set it back on the burner, watching Fox retrieve the pancake and some silverware.

“This is the _biggest_ pancake I have ever seen,” she commented, carrying it over to the table behind the kitchen island and setting it down. She then walked over and grabbed two glasses of water and some syrup before sitting down.

Locus didn’t reply, but kept his eyes on the stove, crossing his arms.

“Oh my god did you _make_ the batter for this? It’s fucking incredible!” Fox exclaimed behind him, sounding like her mouth was full of food.

“Yes,” Locus replied, not looking back at her.

“Don’t tell Sanchez, but this pancake is better than any of the ones he’s made for me ever.”

Locus couldn’t help but feel a little satisfied by her praise, but chose not to acknowledge it right away, instead focusing on flipping the pancake in the pan. “It’s my mother’s recipe.”

_“Please_ write it down for me,” Fox replied.

Locus glanced back at her, noting that she was almost halfway through her meal. _Huh,_ he thought, wondering if maybe she hadn’t grabbed something to eat on her way home from Emblem like he had expected her to. “Did you have dinner?”

“Naw.”

_There we go,_ Locus thought, shutting off the burner and pulling out another plate before plopping the pancake onto it. He dropped the pan and tupperware into the sink, listening to the former hiss as it came into contact with the wet surface of the basin.

“Don’t worry about clean-up. Eat your pancake before it gets cold,” Fox piped up. Then added, “I grabbed you silverware bee-tee-dubs.”

_Oh,_ Locus thought, carrying his plate over and sitting down across from her. “You were on the news,” he said, cutting into his pancake and taking a bite of it.

“Oh, you watched the press conference?” Fox asked.

“It was important,” Locus replied. “It sounds like people are concerned about your father’s connection to Charon.”

Fox pulled a face and took another bite of her pancake. “Great,” she muttered, pulling out her phone and scrolling through her feet. “Oh good, I’m trending on Twitter, too. Hashtag-Emblem-C-E-O. They couldn’t even use my name.”

“Are you planning on addressing your father’s relationship?” Locus asked.

“Eventually,” Fox replied. “Speaking of which,” she said, pointing at him with her fork, “I told Carson the truth about me. Or...I was going to. But apparently Sach and Sanchez beat me to it. They got his help getting us approved to come here.”

Locus narrowed his eyes in thought. “We can trust him?”

“He’s not going to tell anyone about it, but he’s not going to take our side if it somehow comes to light,” Fox explained, taking a bite of her pancake.

“He’ll work against us?”

“I think he’s just going to keep himself neutral about it. Feign ignorance,” Fox replied. “Either way, it’s something to tell Kimball about.”

Locus nodded. “What happens next?”

“Well, I’m going to move some stuff into...my office…” she trailed off, frowning.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. It’s just weird saying that, is all,” Fox replied, shaking her head. “And then tomorrow we’re gonna meet with Latoya.”

Locus nodded. “Have you gotten permission to unlock her file yet?”

“Nope. Sachs is still working on it,” Fox sighed, finishing off her pancake and sitting back in her chair.

“We’ll need to be careful then,” Locus said, not terribly content with the idea of talking shop with someone they didn’t know everything about.

“That was the plan,” Fox replied. “We’ll give her the sales pitch and see what we can find out about her during the meetup. After that, we’ll look over her file and see if we like her.”

Locus just nodded and finished his pancake. “When do you plan on calling Kimball?”

“In a bit. I was going to shower first,” Fox said. And there was something about her tone that made Locus look over at her.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

Fox waved her hand dismissively and shook her head, forcing a smile onto her face. “No, no, it’s just...yesterday I was just me. Now I’m the CEO of _Emblem._ It just feels weird is all.” She met his eyes, this time with a real smile on her face, and said “I’ll be okay. But thanks for asking.”

Locus gave her a nod, then stood and picked up their plates, saying “I’ll clean up.”

“You sure?” Fox asked, standing as well.

“I am. Go get yourself set up to call Kimball,” Locus replied, carrying their plates over to the dishwasher and putting them inside before getting started on the pan in the sink.

“Okay,” Fox said. “Thanks for dinner!”

Locus didn’t say anything, but watched her pick up her shoes from next to the front door before she headed back to her room. Something had changed about her demeanor, but he couldn’t name it. He was certain it had to do with her being put in charge of Emblem, but he also didn’t want to press it. It wasn’t any of his business, after all. Though he wondered if the sudden rise to leadership would put too much pressure on her.

He finished scrubbing the pan and set it on the rack to dry, looking out the window at the city lights illuminating the street below, deciding he’d keep a close eye on Fox until she proved the transition was something she could handle.

 

* * *

 

[ 1:23 PM ]

[ **_Bug:_ ** _Fox._ ]

[ **_FoxNews:_ ** _Ye?_ ]

[ **_Bug:_ ** _Why is my display name “Bug?”_ ]

[ **_FoxNews:_ ** _I changed it_ ]

[ **_FoxNews:_ ** _So it wasn’t that ‘User4748139883 shit anymore_ ]

[ **_Bug:_ ** _How do I change it?_ ]

[ **_FoxNews:_ ** _u gotta wait 48 hrs my dude_ ]

[ **_Bug:_ ** _You have Marz_ ]

[ **_FoxNews:_ ** _ok fine fine I’ll see what I can do_ ]

[ **_FoxNews:_ ** _what do u want it changed to?_ ]

[ **_Bug:_ ** _My codename._ ]

[ **_FoxNews:_ ** _someone’s using that one_ ]

[ **_Bug:_ ** _Like I said, you have Marz._ ]

[ **_FoxNews:_ ** _yeah ok so username “bug” was like_ ]

[ **_FoxNews:_ ** _OLD_ ]

[ **_FoxNews:_ ** _guy who had it before probs died or something so I put in a deactivation request_ ]

[ **_FoxNews:_ ** _guy using ur codename as their username is still active_ ]

[ **_FoxNews:_ ** _srry amigo_ ]

[ **_Bug:_ ** _…_ ]

[ **_FoxNews:_ ** _oh WAIT HOLD ON I HAVE AN IDEA_ ]

[ **_Bug_** _has changed their username to_ ** _xXLocusXx_** ]

[ **_xXLocusXx:_ ** _..._ ]

[ **_FoxNews:_ ** _how’s that?_ ]

[ **_xXLocusXx:_ ** _I can’t believe I traded Felix for you._ ]

[ **_FoxNews:_ ** _LMAO_ ]

[ **_FoxNews:_** _u ready 2 go?_ ]

[ **_xXLocusXx:_ ** _Waiting on you._ ]

[ **_FoxNews:_ ** _we’re meeting siris as his house right?_ ]

[ **_xXLocusXx:_ ** _Yes, and then we’re going to follow him to meet Pierce._ ]

[ **_FoxNews:_ ** _neat. Just checkin_ ]

[ **_FoxNews:_ ** _ok im ready let’s go_ ]

[ **_xXLocusXx:_ ** _Stop texting me when I’m in the same room as you._ ]

[ **_FoxNews:_ ** _h y p o c r i t e_ ]

 

* * *

 

Fox stared up at the tall structure of the hangar, raising a hand to shield her eyes from the sunlight that peeked out over it. Behind her, she heard Locus close the passenger door of her car, and she glanced over when he walked over to join her before looking at Siris as he got out of his car.

“When you said you were gonna have us meet this Latoya chick, I was expecting a coffee shop,” Fox remarked to him.

“As opposed to an airfield?” Siris asked, locking his car and shoving his keys in his pocket as he walked past.

“Well yeah,” Fox replied, glancing back at Locus before following Siris around the corner through the mouth of the hangar. Inside was a large private jet with equipment pressed against the walls around it. Fox took note of the still steaming mug of coffee that was sitting on a workbench next to one of the shelves, looking over at Siris when he shouted out a greeting.

Silence followed for a moment, then there was the sound of a door opening, and Fox found her eyes drawn to what looked like an office space in the upper level of the hangar as someone stepped out of it onto the catwalk above exclaiming “well if it isn’t Mason Wu!”

The voice belonged to a woman with bright eyes and a brighter smile with her dark curly hair tied back into a fluffy ponytail. As she walked down the stairs to their level, Fox noted that both her outfit and her ebony skin were covered in oil and grime. _She’s probably been working all day,_ Fox thought, deciding that it would be better to keep their interaction quick, so as not to hold the other woman up.

“So who are these two?” the woman asked, stopping in front of them with her hands on her hips.

“These are the two friends I wanted you to meet,” Siris explained.

“You have _friends?”_ the woman asked, looking surprised.

“Oh I _like_ you,” Fox grinned.

The woman smirked at her and said “Latoya Pierce, pilot and mechanic. Who are you two?”

“I’m Fox, this is Locus,” Fox replied. “Did Mason tell you why we’re meeting today?”

Latoya raised her eyebrows at Siris in an amused look before turning back to Fox. “Something about a job opportunity?”

“Something like that,” Fox replied.

Latoya looked her up and down for a moment, then turned, waving at them to follow her. “Let’s sit,” she said, and led them over to a duo of sofas facing each other pushed against the wall under the staircase. She plopped herself down on one, scooting over so Siris could take a seat next to her, and propped her feet up on the beaten-to-hell coffee table in front of her.

Fox sat down across from her, glancing over when Locus joined her before directing her gaze at Latoya. “So let me tell you a bit about what we’re doing.”

“That would help,” Latoya remarked.

“So, I’m guessing you saw that broadcast that went out showing all of the crimes of the chairman of Charon Industries, right?”

Latoya blinked, then pulled her legs off of the coffee table and set her feet on the floor, leaning forward. “What about it?”

_Interesting reaction,_ Fox thought. “I’m the leader of a team that’s been authorized by the U.N.S.C. to work to investigate and dismantle Charon on behalf of the colony planet, Chorus. We were sent here by General Kimball, who’s in charge of...the political situation over there.”

“And you’re hiring?” Latoya asked dubiously, crossing her arms. She looked over at Siris. “I guess you’re in on it, huh?”

“I wasn’t so convinced at first, but we’ve assembled a team, and we’ve already made a few strides towards our goal,” Siris replied.

_Gold star for Purple Dad,_ Fox thought. _Didn’t know he could pitch a sale._ “We’re looking to add a pilot to our team. We already had one lined up, but Mason suggested we come talk to you before we settle on anything.”

“What did you tell them?” Latoya asked, still looking at Siris.

“Just that you had piloting skills and served as a Marine,” Siris replied, appearing a little defensive.

Latoya looked back at Fox and asked “so how do you go about recruiting people for your team. You said you had another pilot lined up. How’d you find them? Did the _U.N.S.C._ assign them to you?”

Fox frowned inwardly at the way she said ‘U.N.S.C.’ There hadn’t been anything in Latoya’s file that had suggested bad blood with them, but apparently there was something she had missed. _Maybe it was in one of the locked files,_ Fox thought, taking a mental note to check it out later. “We have an AI that found profiles for possible candidates that matches a series of defined parameters.”

_“You actually came up, but I found someone who fit a little better.”_ Marz’ voice wove its way out of Fox’s pocket, where her phone was.

With a sigh, Fox pulled it out and set it on the coffee table. ‘Her name’s Marz. She runs the U.N.S.C. database.”

_“Nice to meet you!”_ Marz chimed.

“Pleasure,” Latoya said slowly, staring at the phone for a moment before returning her gaze to Fox. “You’re going with second best, it sounds like. Why?”

“The best cred doesn’t always mean the right person,” Fox replied. “Plus, Mason already knew you. With the intensity of some of the things we’re going to be doing, it’s better if we can put together a team with good chemistry. So we figured we’d give you a shot.”

“Uh-huh,” Latoya said, crossing her arms and leaning back slightly, staring down her nose at Fox. “Cool. So what kind of work do you guys do?”

Fox looked over at Siris, raising her eyebrows at him. “How much have you told her about your previous job?”

“The bounty hunting?” Siris asked, glancing at Latoya.

“He tells me everything,” Latoya replied. “Except his line-up for Fantasy Football. Mostly because he always thinks it’s _so_ great and doesn’t want anyone else to copy him,” she added, rolling her eyes and giving Siris a smug grin.

“You’re still bitter about last year, huh?” Siris asked.

“Only because you rubbed it in. Like a douchebag.”

_Well at least they get along,_ Fox thought, watching the two of them. “So...we’re doing something similar to what Mason used to do. Although the danger is a little greater, and we’re taking on bigger challenges.”

“Cool, so what’s the pay like?” Latoya asked, looking back at her.

“Fifty grand sound good?” Fox asked.

“Per what?”

“Weekly.”

_“Weekly?”_ Latoya looked over at Siris in disbelief. “What’s she paying you?”

“The same,” Siris replied.

“What do you do for a living?” Latoya asked, turning back to Fox.

“Depends on how well you can keep a secret,” Fox replied evenly.

“Well,” Latoya said. “It’s not like I have anyone to tell besides Wu, anyways. He’s pretty much the only friend I’ve got around here.”

“Good, because if you go around sharing any of what we’ve discussed so far, or what I’m about to tell you, there’s going to be a problem,” Fox said cooly.

“Oh cool. You’re threatening me. That’s always a good sign,” Latoya said, but seemed unfazed.

“It’s just for the security of the operation,” Fox explained, waving a hand dismissively. “So currently, I’m...well I’m the CEO of Emblem now, I guess.” She glanced over at Locus. “Fuck, it feels weird saying that.”

Latoya stared at her for a minute, then looked over at Siris, then back to Fox. “Wait, _you’re_ that Matsu-what’s-her-face?”

“Matsukaze,” Fox corrected patiently. “And yes.”

“But you don’t _look_ like her,” Latoya said, fingering her chin, leaning forward, and narrowing her eyes.

“That’s ‘cause the version of me you see on TV has a facial mesh and wig on,” Fox replied. “I’m kind of trying to keep this operation a secret.”

“Right,” Latoya said, crossing her arms. She looked over at Locus and said “so what about you? How long have you been a part of this gig?”

“Not long,” Locus replied.

“The two of you tight?” Latoya asked, nodding at Fox.

“We kind of only just met,” Fox said.

“Yeah? How do you know Mason?”

“We worked as bounty hunters together,” Locus replied.

“So this whole thing is just a friend of a friend of a friend kind of situation?” Latoya asked, sounding amused.

_“Something_ like that,” Siris replied.

_“Buuuuut?”_

Siris looked over at Locus, then to Fox, like he wasn’t sure if he should give the full story. “It wasn’t exactly a happy reunion when I met up with Locus again. But we’ve...mostly smoothed things out.”

Latoya looked over at Locus, then back to Siris and said “oh I want _all_ the details later.”

“Maybe,” Siris replied.

“So,” Fox spoke up, “are you in?”

“Not sure yet,” Latoya said. “This isn’t my first time joining a group of people promising to make the world a better place. It didn’t end so well for me last time. I need to know as much as you can tell me before I so much as _think_ about it.”

“I can have Marz send everything to your phone, computer, whatever,” Fox replied, wondering if what Latoya was talking about was something she’d be able to find in the locked section of her file.

“Cool,” Latoya said. “And I hate to hold you all hostage, but I don’t want you going anywhere until I see what you sent me, just in case I have any questions. If you want me on board, you’re going to have to prove I can trust you.”

“Understandable,” Fox said, a little impressed. Latoya certainly knew how to get the full picture.

“Great,” Latoya said, then stood. “I’m going to make some coffee. Anyone want some?”

“Sounds great,” Fox said, looking over when her phone started to buzz. She picked it up and frowned at the screen when she saw the name. Sachs. Hopefully he was calling about Latoya’s file and not about something else, Fox thought. She glanced over as Latoya started towards where the coffee mug had been sitting near the front of the plane. “I need to take a call before we can talk about anything,” she told her.

“Pop into my office if you need some privacy. This whole place echoes,” Latoya called back, proving her point as her voice reverberated off the walls.

“I’ll be right back,” Fox said to Siris and Locus before she hopped to her feet and made her way to the stairs, answering her phone on her way up. “Sachs?”

“Hello! I didn’t think you were going to pick up!” Sachs exclaimed on the other end of the line.

Fox shook her head and stepped onto the catwalk, walking into Latoya’s office and shutting the door behind her. “What do you need?”

“I’m just calling you about that access request you sent over our way for that file,” Sachs replied.

“Latoya Pierce?”

“That’s the one.”

“And?”

“Well, I don’t know what you’re lookin’ into her for, but I had to jump through a _lot_ of loopholes to get it unlocked for you.”

Fox frowned, leaning against the wall opposite Latoya’s desk, next to the corkboard covered in documents. “Why?”

“Not sure. No one was giving me any answers. But it can’t be anything good if the U.N.S.C. was trying to keep it quiet,” Sachs said.

Fox pushed away from the wall and turned to look at the corkboard, eyes scanning over the documents, as if they’d somehow give her answers. “Mmm. I’ll look into it later. We’re talking to her right now.”

“Aw hell,” Sachs sighed. “You can’t leap before looking like that with this kind of operation.”

“She’s a friend of one of my teammates,” Fox said, turning to look at Latoya’s desk, noting the array of pictures taped to the wall behind it. Curious, she walked over to it, saying “we need good chemistry in this group. Besides, I can handle something as simple as the wrong people knowing the wrong thing.”

“Careful,” Sachs warned, but sounded amused. “Just make sure the wrong people don’t have any power.”

“I’m not a little kid, Sachs,” Fox replied, narrowing her eyes at a photo that caught her attention. “And this isn’t my first rodeo, _cowboy.”_

Sachs burst out laughing. _“Well,_ I wouldn’t think so. You can handle yourself plenty. I know that. Now, I’ll let you go. I just wanted to update you on the profile. Let me know when you get a chance to look at it, yeah?”

“I will. Bandwidth is shit out here, so it’ll take a little bit,” Fox replied a little absently as she peered at the photo. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“Sounds good. Take care now!”

Fox ended the call and shoved her phone into her back pocket before looking out the window next to the office door to make sure she wasn’t in anyone’s line of sight. Then she reached up and pulled the photo off the wall, examining it closely. _No fucking way,_ she thought, eyes scanning over the people in the picture. _How the hell did she know them? Who are we_ **_dealing_ ** _with?_ Setting her jaw, Fox shoved the photo into her pocket and drew the gun she had hidden under her jacket, holding it low by her side as she stepped out of the office and started down the stairs.

 

* * *

 

“So.”

Locus looked up from his phone at Siris, who had spoken. Barely a minute after Fox had left, and already the silence was being broken. Great.

“When are you going to tell everyone what you told me after I ran into you and Fox that one night?” Siris asked, appearing to be aware of how uncomfortable the topic was.

Locus sighed and looked over at where Latoya was setting up the coffee machine. “Once we have a full team. That way I won’t have to repeat myself.”

Siris just nodded, looking over when Latoya began walking back towards them. “That was fast.”

“I make coffee on the clock all the time,” Latoya replied, wiping her hands on her jeans. “Gotta get fast at it.” She grabbed a stepladder from between two shelves and pulled it open, setting it down near the tail of the airplane before grabbing a tool belt off of the workbench behind her. She snapped it on, then climbed up the stepladder.

Curious, Locus stood and walked over to see what she was doing, noting that one of the panels had been pulled away to reveal some of the machinery underneath. “What are you working on?”

“An airplane,” Latoya replied.

Locus gave her an annoyed look.

Latoya grinned, clearly noticing, and said “she’s been making some weird noises during take-off. Haven’t had any trouble yet, but my client wants to make sure she doesn’t peace out on her during a flight.” She pulled a flashlight off of her belt and shone it on the machinery. “I gotta look at the engines next after I finish figuring out what’s making her squeal like she is now.”

“How old is the plane?” Locus asked. It didn’t _look_ like a current model.

“Old as shit. And her guts prove it,” Latoya replied, stowing her flashlight away and pulling a wrench out of her belt. “Take a look at her other wing if you wanna see for yourself. I’ve got the engine torn apart on that side.”

Curious, and having nothing better to do, Locus walked around to the other wing. It was _definitely_ gutted. All of the panels covering it had been removed and were stacked in a pile against the hangar wall. “You’re working on this by yourself?”

“Not usually. I have a few guys who come in to help. I like to come in on my days off though, just because it gives me a chance to think,” Latoya replied. “And this plane belongs to a collector, and it’s kind of an antique, so it’s fun to work on.”

“And it’s safe to fly?”

“Fuck no. But my client’s a dumbass, and they’re not paying me to give them advice, so I’m just doing as I’m told,” Latoya replied.

_Fair enough,_ Locus thought, glancing back when he heard the sound of footsteps on the catwalk above. He watched as Fox descended down the stairs, looking a little tense. When she reached the bottom step, she made eye-contact with him, and he couldn’t help but get the distinct impression that something was wrong. That’s when he saw the gun.

Fox must have noticed, because she just shook her head, and said “hey Latoya, I have a question for you.”

“Oh, you’re back!” Latoya exclaimed, climbing down from the stepladder and walking around the tail of the plane to face them. “Did you send me all that info yet--” she cut off with a shocked expression on her face when Fox raised her gun and pointed it at her.

Immediately, Siris was on his feet and at Latoya’s side, exclaiming “whoah _whoah, hey!_ What do you think you’re _doing?”_

“Getting answers,” Fox replied, not looking at him. Then to Latoya, she asked “who _are_ you?”

“What’s wrong?” Locus asked, pulling his eyes away from Siris to look at Fox.

Fox didn’t say anything, but fished something out of her pocket with her free hand and held it out to him. It was a photo with a group of people in it, and when Locus took it from her, he realized he was looking at a younger Latoya with a group of people. Two of them he recognized as Wash and Carolina. “Was this from Project Freelancer?” he asked, looking over at Latoya, who immediately went rigid.

“Who the _fuck_ are you people?” Latoya gritted out, looking first to him, then to Fox.

“Answer mine and I’ll answer yours,” Fox replied evenly with a nod. “How do you know Agents Washington and Carolina?”

“How do you _know_ those names?!”

“I’m getting impatient,” Fox said, an edge to her voice.

Latoya sucked in a breath between gritted teeth and said “listen, I was a _pilot_ for Project Freelancer, okay? You’ve got that AI thing, so just look me up if you don’t believe me. My callsign was four-seven-niner.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)  
> ehehehEHEHEHEHEH SHE’S BACK BABY  
> Goddamn was it tough to wait to bring her into this story. 
> 
> Hey remember that one part at the very beginning of this chapter where Wash was like “we should bury him” when talking about the Meta armor and then corrected himself and called it an “it” instead of “him”? I fucking died a little when I wrote that. I hope you’re all happy. 
> 
> Grenades don’t make holes that big but fuck it, this shit takes place like 500 years in the future anyways. Their technology has advanced. Suspension of disbelief. Don’t look at me.  
> The group chat has its importance. You’ll see eventually.  
> I know the illustration doesn't match up perfectly with what happens in the chapter but it just looks so much better this way okay let me live.
> 
> A while ago it came to my attention that Fox and Locus’ response to dealing with a murderous AI was to just unplug her and I’m fucking inconsolable. 
> 
> Lopez:  
> \- “It's more like wishful thinking.”  
> \- “nothing nice, anyways.”


	23. This is Your Pilot Speaking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Niner joins the team, Locus gets a dog, and shit on Chorus gets FuNkY.
> 
> Also body horror and violence warning for the VERY last scene of this chapter. It's mostly in cold detail, but I'm warning you anyways because I LOVE you. Be safe. Stay hydrated.

“Marz?” Fox asked, holding her phone in her free hand.

_ “Give me a moment,” _ came the reply. And a second later, Marz said  _ “Latoya Pierce. Worked as a pilot for Project Freelancer up until it was dismantled. Served two years of jail time for her affiliation  _ **_with_ ** _ said project. She’s telling the truth.” _

Fox took a deep breath and slowly lowered her gun, giving Pierce an odd look before holstering it. “No kidding,” she said. “Sorry about that.”

Latoya just fixed her in a glare, her shoulders still stiff with tension. “Alright, my turn,” she said. “Who are you and how do you know about the Project?”

“Everything we told you about us was the truth,” Fox said, side-eyeing Siris, who was standing tense off to the side, looking back and forth at her and Latoya. 

“That  _ doesn’t  _ answer my question.”

 

 

“I was getting to that,” Fox said flatly. “Locus and I met Wash and Carolina on Chorus.”

“Bull.  _ Shit,”   _ Latoya growled, disbelief on her face. “Both of them are  _ dead!” _

Fox exchanged a look with Locus, then said “well then someone’s dabbling in necromancery because they seemed  _ pretty _ alive when we last talked to them.”

Latoya stared at her, then looked over at Locus, who nodded. “You guys are serious?” she asked, turning back to Fox with wide eyes.

“We are,” Fox replied cautiously. “Is that a problem?”

“What do you--?  _ No! _ They-- they were my  _ teammates! _ I thought they were  _ dead--” _ Latoya cut off, crossing her arms and looking at the ground. “I’m...I need proof,” she said, turning back to Fox.

“If you want, I can try to call Kimball and get you in touch with them,” Fox suggested. “And in the meantime, I can have Marz send your file over to her to look at to confirm whether or not she wants you onboard.”

“Fine,” Latoya said evenly.

_ “File is sent, and all the mission information has been uploaded to your phone, Niner,”  _ Marz piped up.

Latoya frowned and pulled out her phone, blinking at the logo that was on the screen before looking over at Fox. “Alright, let’s sit down and talk about all of this. You pointed a gun at my head, so you owe me a guided narration of everything you just had your AI send me.”

Fox chuckled. “Yeah, that seems fair,” she said, and followed Latoya over to one of the couches, sitting down next to her.

“So these are the files of all the people you’ve already hired, huh?” Latoya asked, swiping through the information on the screen of her phone. “I see you have  _ Mason. _ Looking good in that photo, champ. Was that from high school?” she asked, looking over at Siris with a smug look on her face.

Siris walked over, arms crossed, and leaned in to squint at the screen when Latoya held the phone out to him. “No? That’s the photo on my driver’s license.”

“You look thirteen.”

“It’s the lighting.”

“Uh-huh,” Latoya said, taking her phone back.

Fox glanced up when Siris and Locus sat down across from them, both seeming interested in what was on Latoya’s phone. She remembered that neither of them had actually  _ seen _ the digital sales pitch. “This is what Jersey, Rocket, and Grizzly got too,” she explained.

“Any chance you could send it to me?” Siris asked.

_ “Say please,” _ Marz said.

_ “Please,” _ Siris replied, annoyed.

Fox gave him an apologetic look. “You should get it in a few minutes.”

“Oh, so  _ you’re _ Ortez,” Latoya said suddenly, looking up at Locus with an amused look on her face. 

He froze like a deer in the headlights, then glared at Siris out of the corner of his eye.

“Someone’s been talking  _ shit,” _ Fox chimed, crossing both her legs and arms and raising her eyebrows at Siris.

“I didn’t-- I told her a few bounty hunting stories, that’s it!” Siris exclaimed. 

“And that you shot him in the chest,” Latoya added, nodding at Siris, but not taking her eyes off of Locus.

“That was Felix,” Locus growled.

Latoya flicked her gaze over to Siris, who nodded. “Good,” she said, giving Locus a warning look. “‘Cause otherwise I’d drop-kick you into a jet engine and feed your remains to my cat.”

Locus narrowed his eyes at her, but didn’t say anything.

“So, some stuff that you should probably know is that we’re pretty much hiring ex-Marines exclusively,” Fox spoke up, eager to diffuse the tension. As fun as Latoya was, she didn’t seem to have much self-preservation when it came to picking her targets.

“Is the twink a Marine?” Latoya asked, looking back at her phone and tapping on Rocket’s profile to magnify his picture.

“Oh my god,” Siris muttered.

“No, he’s an ex-cop,” Fox replied.

“Oh good. Tell me he’s chill,” Latoya said, looking over at Fox.

“So far, yeah. And he’s not good with guns,” Fox said. “He’s just going to be our driver since he knows the city, and he’s useful because he has connections to the local police force. So we can use them to shut down streets and whatnot if we need them to.”

“Huh,” Latoya said, her face unreadable. “Why’s he like, four?”

“Because he wasn’t born around the same time the rest of us were,” Fox replied flatly.

“I walked right into that one,” Latoya sighed. “So these other two seem cool. I’ll look into them later. And all this mission stuff is just...What you went over with me earlier?”

“For the most part. Some of it talks about the fact that we’re technically an ONI operation. There’s also a few other files with information on some key players that we’re going to keep in contact with. The two most important that you need to know about are General Sachs and Sanchez. Sachs still works for the U.N.S.C., but Sanchez is retired. Both of them have links that will help keep us in operation. You’ll see them around eventually. They’re pretty cool,” Fox explained.

“And what about General Kimball? I know you said that you were sent here by her. I’m guessing you work for her?” Latoya asked.

“Yeah.”

“So why do you need Sachs?”

“He’s just an old friend,” Fox shrugged.

“Oh, so it’s not like a joint operation between the two of them. Cool,” Latoya said. “So you report to Kimball. Does that mean I’m going to get a chance to meet her?”

“Sure!” Fox exclaimed. “Heck, why don’t we call her right now and introduce you! We could even see if she could get Wash and Carolina on the call with her. Does that sound good?” she asked, glancing over at Locus and Siris.

“I don’t care  _ what _ you do,” Siris sighed, crossing his arms. “Just...no more guns, okay?”

“Deal,” Fox replied with a grin, then pulled up Kimball’s contact on her phone and started a video call.

 

* * *

 

Kimball was in the middle of answering emails when she received a message from Marz. Frowning, she opened it, looking over the information, surprised when she saw that Fox had not only sent her a file for a pilot, but also one that had connections to Project Freelancer.  _ Wash and Carolina will want to hear about this, _ she thought, taking a sip of her coffee. She had only just set her mug back on the table when a video call from Fox came through. With a sigh, she minimized her inbox and picked up the call, quickly straightening up when she was met with both Fox, and a new face on the screen. 

“Commander Fox,” she greeted dryly. “I wasn’t aware I was going to be meeting a new teammate of yours  _ today.” _

“It’s...sort of a...by-necessity meeting,” Fox replied apologetically, glancing to the side. “I asked our teammates to see if they knew anyone who might be helpful to us, and Siris knew a girl who was a pilot. Her name’s Latoya Pierce. I’m with her right now. Did you have a chance to look over the profile Marz sent you on her?”

“I have,” Kimball replied. “Have you given her the sales pitch already?”

“Yup,” Fox replied, “but she’s not gonna buy it until I prove that her friends from Project Freelancer are still alive.”

Kimball blinked. “Which friends?”

“Agents Washington and Carolina, ma’am,” Latoya spoke up. 

“I...sort of told her I’d ask if you could get them on the line,” Fox said, sounding apologetic. 

Kimball sighed again and said “I’ll see what I can do,” then hit the mic button on the screen and turned, pressing a finger to the button on the comm in her ear. “Agents Washington and Carolina, could I see you in my office for a moment?” she said, then turned back to the video call, activating the mic again. “They’re on their way.”

“Thanks,” Fox said. 

“General Kimball, if you don’t mind me asking, how did Agents Washington and Carolina wind up on Chorus?” Latoya asked. 

“They crash-landed here with a group of Sim Troopers called the Reds and Blues,” Kimball replied. 

“Sim Troopers?” Latoya echoed, raising her eyebrows. “Holy shit, I didn’t think there would be any  _ left.” _

Kimball was about to ask why when she heard the doors to her office slide open. Looking up, she was met with the sight of Carolina and Wash walking in. 

“You needed us for something?” Wash asked. 

Kimball nodded. “Fox reached out to her teammates to see if they knew any possible candidates that could useful assets to them and managed to find someone from Project Freelancer. She claims to know the two of you and won’t agree to help until she knows you’re both alive.”

Wash and Carolina exchanged a look, and Kimball would have killed to have seen what was going on inside of their heads. Carolina hadn’t told her much about the Project, only that towards the end of it, the trust between the members of her and Wash’s team had been torn apart. That considered, Kimball wondered if they were uncertain if they should trust the situation, or the person who had caused it.

“Who?” Carolina asked. 

“A woman named Latoya Pierce,” Kimball replied, looking back at her monitor and pulling up the profile Marz had sent her. “Though I think the two of you probably knew her by Four-Seven-Ni--”

_ “Niner?!” _ Wash exclaimed, and when Kimball looked up at him, he was already on his way to her side. 

“Wait, I’d recognize that squeaky voice  _ anywhere,” _ Latoya said. And as Wash stepped up next to Kimball, her face lit up in excitement. “Holy shit! Holy  _ shit! _ You’re  _ alive!” _

“Somehow,” Wash replied, a smile in his voice.

“How did you--? I mean, I thought-- I heard you  _ died _ along with the  _ Meta!” _

“Yeah, that’s...kind of a long story,” Wash said, rubbing the back of his neck. 

“Well you have to  _ tell _ me, asshole! I didn’t desk-jockey for you while you were off playing Recovery One just for you to hold out on telling me how you escaped!” Latoya exclaimed, then she leaned back slightly. “Hey, by the way, where’s Carolina? I heard she was with you.”

Kimball looked over at Carolina, who was still hovering in front of the office door.

“Is it really her?” Carolina asked.

“Nope. The Director cloned the real Niner, and you’re talking to a doppelganger.”

Carolina was silent for a moment, then shook her head and slowly made her way over to Kimball’s side, looking over at the screen in front of her. 

On the screen, Latoya frowned. “Wash, are you sure--”

Kimball looked over as Carolina pulled off her helmet, prompting a gasp from Latoya. 

“It  _ is _ you! Holy fuck!”

“I got new armor,” Carolina said simply, setting her helmet down on Kimball’s desk. 

“Really? I couldn’t tell,” Latoya said flatly, clearly fighting a smile. 

“Niner, what  _ happened  _ to you?” Wash asked. “I mean, we lost contact and--”

“I got sent away on an all-expenses-paid trip to the penitentiary,” Latoya said, her smile turning into an ironic smirk. “Said I was guilty by association, or whatever.”

“Lame,” Wash said.

“Hey, it was better than having to listen to the Director yell at me about AI’s and ‘Ninah this prohjayct was  _ sapposed _ tah help tha Yew-En-Ess-See’ trying to tell me I was still doing the right thing. Fat lot of good ‘the right thing’ did me,” Latoya huffed. 

Kimball looked over when Wash burst out laughing at Latoya’s impression. “He didn’t actually sound like that, right?” she asked, turning to Carolina, who had pinched the bridge of her nose and squeezed her eyes shut.

“He did,” Carolina sighed, dropping her hand and looking over at her. 

“By the way, how did you survive getting launched off of a cliff?” Latoya asked, leaning towards the screen slightly.

“Snow drift,” Carolina replied. 

“So you didn’t do any fancy flips to get out of it? You just accepted your fate and ate shit?” Latoya asked, a smirk on her face. 

“I never said  _ that,” _ Carolina said. 

“Hey, so, before we all get comfortable and start sharing our life stories with everybody, we should  _ probably _ remember we’re all taking up Kimball’s time,” Fox spoke up. 

“Er, right,” Wash said, straightening up and looking over at Kimball.

“Can you set up a channel for these three to contact one another?” Kimball asked, looking back at Fox.

“I can get Marz on that for me. It shouldn’t take to long,” Fox replied with a nod.

“Perfect. Thank you,” Kimball said, then looked at Latoya. “So?”

“Ma’am?”

“You told Fox you wouldn’t consider helping her team until you knew that Wash and Carolina were alive,” Kimball reminded her.

“Oh, yeah,” Latoya said, then looked over at Fox. “I guess I’m in. Besides, I can’t leave my old teammates hanging. And this’ll be a chance for me to get back at the guy who got me thrown in jail.”

“Great,” Kimball said, glancing over when Carolina picked her helmet back up and put it on. “Commander Fox will go over the details with you and share the location of their current base of operations, as well as expectations. I look forward to seeing what you have offer.”

“I won’t let you down,” Latoya replied, offering a snappy salute. “And hey, Wash, Carolina?”

“Yeah Niner?” Wash asked.

“I’m real glad you two made it,” Latoya said with a grin.

“Same to you,” Carolina replied.

Kimball simply nodded and said “you can expect to be called in for a mission within the next few days. I’ll be in touch. General Kimball signing off.” She ended the call and looked back at Carolina and Wash. “How are you two holding up?”

“Fine,” Wash replied. 

Kimball glanced over at Carolina, who nodded at her, then said “I’ll let you two know when Marz has set up a channel for you to reach out to her again, and see what I can do to clear your schedules so the three of you can catch up.”

“That would be great,” Carolina said. “Thank you, Kimball.”

Kimball just shrugged. “So where are you two off to?”

“Training with the lieutenants,” Wash replied.

“Patrol,” Carolina said. 

“Mm. I might join you on that,” Kimball said to her. 

“Sounds good,” Carolina said, turning and starting towards the door. “I’ll meet you in the armory. Come on, Wash.”

Kimball looked over when Wash straightened up and said “er- right! Coming!” He hurried towards the door, stopping and looking back at Kimball before stepping out and saying “hey, by the way, when you have a chance, could you thank Fox for us?”

Kimball nodded. “I will.”

“Great, thank you!” Wash said, then followed Carolina out.

Kimball watched the doors slide shut, the wheels in her mind turning. Either Grey had spiked her coffee, or Carolina was acting weird. With a sigh, she looked back at the profile on her screen, eyes scanning over it one last time before she minimized the window, knocked back the rest of her coffee, and stood. 

Maybe she’d be able to figure out what was up with Carolina on patrol.

 

* * *

 

“So Pierce,” Fox said, pocketing her phone and standing. “Since you’ve decided to join our lovely little crusade, I’m gonna let you in on one of our most important rules.”

“Hit me,” Latoya said, crossing her arms and leaning back into the sofa. 

“Codenames,” Fox said. 

Latoya raised her eyebrows. “Oh, really? I thought you had gone and legally changed your names to ‘Fox’ and ‘Locus,’ and your files just hadn’t updated yet.”

“I can see how you’d be friends with Wash and Lina,” Fox said dryly, an amused smile on her face. “But yeah. They’re important. So pick one.”

“Just call me Niner,” Latoya said.

“Cool.”

“So where’s this base of operations thing that General Kimball mentioned?” Niner asked.

“Warehouse a little ways away from here. I’ll show you around sometime before our next mission,” Fox said.

“Cool.”

“Any more questions?” Fox asked, watching Siris check his phone out of the corner of her eye.

“Naw,” Niner replied. “You guys seem legit, and if Wash and Carolina trust you, so do I.” She stood and pocketed her phone before walking back over to the plane she had been working on before. She looked it over with her hands on her hips, then glanced at the watch on her wrist, then sighed. “It was nice meeting you guys, but I have stuff to do, and the day isn’t over yet.”

“We’ll get out of your hair, then,” Fox said, standing. Locus and Siris did the same.

Niner looked over at them, then gestured for them to follow her and started towards the mouth of the hangar. “I’ll walk you out. Come on.” She led the three of them to the hangar entrance and stopped and faced them once they reached it. “I’m guessing we’ll be in touch?” she asked Fox.

“There’s a group chat I’ll add you to once we get everything approved,” Fox replied.

“Cool.”

“Hey, so before we go, Grizzly invited all of us to dinner,” Siris spoke up.

Fox looked over at Niner. “Good chance for you to meet our team.”

“I dunno,” Niner replied. “I’ll see what I can get done.”

“Text me. I’ll give you the details,” Siris told her, then looked over at Fox and Locus. “Are you two coming?”

“I need to get all of Niner’s information processed, so...probably not,” Fox replied then looked over and raised her eyebrows at Locus in question.

He shook his head.

“You should  _ go,” _ Fox said.

“Another time,” Locus sighed, though Fox could tell he was lying. 

_ Introvert. Right. Doesn’t like last-minute invites, _ she thought. “Sorry,” she said, looking back at Siris. “Have fun though! This’ll be a good way for you guys to get to know each other.”

“That’s what I thought. Though they’ll be disappointed that you two aren’t coming, I’m sure,” Siris replied, looking like he understood. 

Fox nodded, then turned back to Niner and said “well, it was great meeting  you. Glad you could join us. Good luck on your...plane.”

Niner cracked a half-smile. “Likewise. Minus the plane part.” She turned and started back into the hangar, waving over her shoulder and saying “see you around.”

Fox looked after her for a moment, then beamed over at Siris. “Good call! That went way better than I thought it would!”

“You pointed a  _ gun _ at her,” Siris replied flatly.

“She worked for Project Freelancer. She’s probably used to it,” Fox said, rolling her eyes. “Anyways, we’ve got stuff to do, so we’re gonna head out,” she added, turning and starting towards where she had parked her car. “Say hi to the boys for me, yeah?”

“Will do,” she heard Siris say from somewhere behind her. 

Fox unlocked her car, hopping into the driver’s seat. She waited for Locus to get in and get situated before saying “small world, huh?”

“She’s an interesting find,” he said.

“She is,” Fox agreed, pulling away and starting down the back road that had led them to the hangar. “It’ll be interesting to see how things pan out with her on our team.”

“Charon was instrumental in the disbandment of Project Freelancer,” Locus said with a nod, eyes on the road ahead. “She has plenty of reasons to want to work with us.”

“So you think she’s a good choice?” Fox asked, curious. This was the first time he had ever given her something this close to an opinion.

Locus glanced over at her. “I think her interests align with our own, and that will be useful.”

“I agree,” Fox said, a smile spreading on her face. “We’ll just have to see how far her motivation takes her when the going gets tough. All things considered, I think we could benefit from having a Freelancer on our team.”

 

* * *

 

[ 6:25 pm ]

[  **_JerseyBoiii:_ ** @xXLocusXx  _ so about that username…  _ ]

[  **_xXLocusXx:_ ** _ Fox changed it.  _ ]

[  **_JerseyBoiii:_ ** _ INCREDIBLE  _ ]

[  **_xXLocusXx:_ ** _ I can’t find the menu to change it to something else.  _ ]

[  **_JerseyBoiii:_ ** _ what kind of phone u got?  _ ]

[  **_xXLocusXx:_ ** _ Same make and model as yours.  _ ]

[  **_PopitRockit:_ ** _ it should be in the top right?  _ ]

[  **_xXLocusXx:_ ** _ It’s not.  _ ]

[  **_JerseyBoiii:_ ** _ bro idk what to tell u I think Fox fucked w ya  _ ]

[  **_xXLocusXx:_ ** _ I’ll talk to her later.  _ ]

[  **_Siris77:_ ** _ …  _ ]

[  **_PopitRockit:_ ** _ hey can someone check on  _ @Siris77 _? He’s been typing for a really long time.  _ ]

[  **_JerseyBoiii:_ ** _ he’s fuckin dead man  _ ]

[  **_BeardBear:_ ** _ No he’s cool. He’s just laughing really hard.  _ ]

[  **_xXLocusXx:_ ** _ =_=  _ ]

[ **_FoxNews:_** @BeardBear _tell him to share with the class_ ]

[  **_BeardBear:_ ** _ …  _ ]

[  **_BeardBear:_ ** _ “His username makes him sound like the author of fucking ‘My Immortal’” - Siris.  _ ]

[  **_JerseyBoiii:_ ** _ he ded  _ ]

[  **_FoxNews:_ ** _ holy fuck after 500 yrs we’ve finally found the REAL author!  _ ]

[  **_JerseyBoiii:_ ** _ The Truth Do Come Out: Does Locus Is Real Author Of “My Immortal”?  _ ]

[ **_BeardBear:_** @JerseyBoiii _he’s gonna kill you in your sleep buddy_ ]

[  **_FoxNews:_ ** _ nah dude his bedtime is like  _ ]

[  **_FoxNews:_ ** _ 8  _ ]

[  **_PopitRockit:_ ** _ EXPOSE HIM  _ ]

[  **_BeardBear:_ ** _ ya’ll trying to die tonight smh  _ ]

[  **_BeardBear:_ ** @xXLocusXx _ we’re cool, right?  _ ]

[  **_xXLocusXx:_ ** _ Sure.  _ ]

[ **_Siris77:_** @xXLocusXx _I’m sorry that was just really funny._ ]

[  **_xXLocusXx_ ** _ removed  _ **_Siris77_ ** _ from the chat.  _ ]

[  **_JerseyBoiii:_ ** _ fuckin ANNIHILATED  _ ]

[  **_xXLocusXx:_ ** _ You’re next.  _ ]

[  **_FoxNews_ ** _ added  _ **_Siris77_ ** _ to the chat.  _ ]

[  **_PopitRockit:_ ** _ hail to the queen.  _ ]

[  **_JerseyBoiii:_ ** _ ALL HAIL  _ ]

[  **_BeardBear:_ ** _ ya’ll are fuckin weird.  _ ]

 

* * *

 

Carolina looked out over the valley as she made her way down the patrol trail, her mind scrambling for answers as she thought about the fact that Niner was alive. How many were left, if she was still alive? What did that mean for her and Wash? How many of them wanted vengeance for what the Project did to them? Would it make them a threat?

She had always known that her and Wash weren’t the only survivors. There were other teams. Other agents. Many of whom she’d never met, only heard of. The potential impacts of this were a seed that had been planted in her mind when she first fought Sharkface. And now with Niner surfacing, almost as though back from the dead, it had sprouted. 

And it wasn’t that she didn’t like Niner. Hell, she was  _ happy _ the other woman was alive. Even as the Project had fallen apart, she had remained one of the people Carolina knew she could trust. But the reality that the effects of the Project were still lingering made her uneasy. They were so much closer than she had thought. 

Carolina gazed at the ground for a moment, gradually becoming aware that someone was staring at her, and looking over at Kimball, who had been keeping pace with her the entire time.

“Do I finally have your attention?” Kimball asked, sounding amused.

“What?” Carolina asked.

“I’ve been calling your name for the past minute. You really didn’t hear me?” Kimball explained, tilting her head slightly. “Where  _ are _ you right now?”

“On patrol,” Carolina replied, confused. 

“No, I meant  _ mentally. _ Because you sure aren’t  _ here.” _

Carolina blinked, then glanced over her shoulder at the trio of soldiers behind them. They were a few paces back, and engaged in their own conversation. “I’m just thinking about what it means that Niner is still alive, is all.”

“What it means?” Kimball echoed.

Carolina nodded, eyes forward. “Project Freelancer...hurt a lot of people.”

“This isn’t about Sharkface, is it?” Kimball asked quickly.

Under her helmet, Carolina narrowed her eyes. “No. He’s not a threat anymore. I know that. It’s just…” She looked over at Kimball and sighed. “The Director of Project Freelancer...he...I’m…” She turned her head away, her throat feeling like it wanted to close up. “I’m his daughter,” she forced out in a soft voice.

Kimball was silent after that, almost for too long, and though Carolina wasn’t looking at her, she could imagine the surprise in her body language. But then she spoke. “I had no idea,” she said softly. “That must be hard for you.”

And Carolina heard herself let out a bitter chuckle. And she still wasn’t sure why she even brought it up. It was like a part of her  _ wanted _ Kimball to know. She couldn’t understand it. “Epsilon was the only person who ever knew. He was there with me when I went to kill him.”

“Ah,” Kimball said, then turned suddenly to face the three soldiers behind them and said “I want you three to continue on the patrol route, then finish up and head back to headquarters, understand?”

With a chorus of “yes ma’am,” the soldiers did as she asked, and Carolina stepped off the trail beside Kimball to let them pass.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Carolina said quietly once they were out of earshot.

“This doesn’t feel like something you want anyone other than me to know, am I right?” Kimball asked.

Carolina stared at her, wondering if she even  _ wanted _ Kimball to know the rest of it. Wondering if it would be easier to say “just kidding!” and hightail it back to headquarters and forget the whole thing.  _ That’s a great way to never be taken seriously again, _ Carolina thought.  _ You dug your grave, now lie in it. _ “You are,” she said.

Kimball nodded, then said “I’m all ears if you want to keep going. Or we can just find somewhere quiet to sit, or...whatever you want to do.”

“I-- I’m fine,” Carolina said, trying hard to keep her tone even. 

Kimball nodded, then reached out and took her hand.

_ Oh, okay, we’re doing  _ **_this_ ** _ now, _ Carolina thought, allowing Kimball to lead her to the fork in the trail where one path led up the mountain, and the other to headquarters. Carolina was startled when Kimball took the former. “Where are we going?” she asked.

“You’ll see,” Kimball replied.

And so Carolina let her take them up the winding path, and held her tongue when they broke trail near the top of the mountain, picking their way through the undergrowth. She finally spoke up when she heard a dull roar growing ever closer in the distance, asking “what is this place?”

And Kimball simply looked back at her, then led her around a boulder, damp and covered with moss, and through a cloud of water vapor that caught the spectrum as light pierced through the millions of tiny prisms it was composed of, before a waterfall. 

Carolina allowed herself a moment to stare at it in awe before she looked over at Kimball and asked “how did you find this place?”

“Grif, believe it or not,” Kimball replied, letting go of her hand and sitting down cross-legged on the mossy riverbank.

Carolina did the same. “When did that happen?”

“A few days ago,” Kimball replied. “Apparently I need to learn how to relax, according to him.”

“He’s right,” Carolina said, amused.

“Either I’m going crazy, or you just took his side,” Kimball mused, looking over at her.

“You  _ do _ tend to get wound up sometimes,” Carolina said.

“Uh-huh,” Kimball grumbled good-naturedly. “Anyways, we didn’t come here to talk about me.”

And Carolina felt her throat start to get tight again with a jolt, and looked away. “Right,” she said slowly.

“You don’t have to talk about it,” Kimball added quickly. “I just...It sounded like you wanted to. Or  _ needed _ to.”

“I…” Carolina swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and continued. “I’m just...Niner was hurt by Project Freelancer.  _ Everyone _ involved with it was, the Reds and Blues included. And it just keeps coming back. I’m tired of it chasing me.” She sighed. “Niner was my friend. And the Reds and Blues...they’re  _ family _ now. But if any of them found out who I really am…” She looked over at Kimball. “I can’t lose them,” she said, hate, hate,  _ hating  _ the wobble in her voice, but not knowing how to stop it. 

“You won’t,” Kimball spoke up, her voice gentle but firm. “They care about you, Carolina. And they know you’ve been through a lot. You don’t have to tell them, but if you do, they’ll understand.”

“You don’t know that,” Carolina said bitterly, shaking her head. 

Kimball just shrugged, clearly not looking for an argument, and fell silent. And Carolina couldn’t help but feel a little guilty, so she changed the subject. “It wouldn’t be difficult for Fox to find out either. She has the means to. I’m worried what she might do with that information.”

“I don’t think she has a reason to go digging through your personal life, honestly,” Kimball said. “And, say she does, what do you think she’d do?”

Carolina shook her head. “I don’t know. Try to find the other Freelancers?”

“Would that necessarily be a bad thing?”

“Well...it depends…”

“On?”

“On who she finds. All of my teammates were killed. Everyone who’s left isn’t at the same skill level we were,” Carolina replied.

“I see…” Kimball said, sounding a little amused by that.

“And they probably weren’t given much of an explanation as to what happened or why the Project fell apart. And that could make them hostile. Suddenly losing everything for seemingly no reason. I’m just...worried,” Carolina sighed. “We’re so close to the finish line, but we still have so far to go.”

“I hear you,” Kimball replied, nodding in agreement. “If it makes you feel better, I’m sure if Fox were to find more people from Project Freelancer, and they did  _ somehow _ find out about your connection to it, they’ll understand you were hurt by it too.”

“I don’t know,” Carolina said. “I don’t think I’ll ever be free of it.”

“Maybe,” Kimball said. “But just because you had a bad start, doesn’t mean your future has to be the same way.” She turned her head and caught Carolina’s gaze. “You have people who care about you here.”

And her words were enough to help melt the ball of ice that had formed in Carolina’s chest. A little bit, anyways. And she reached over, without really thinking about it, and put her hand over Kimball’s. “Thank you,” she said.

“Any time,” Kimball replied.

And the two of them sat there, listening to the roar of the waterfall, until the sun began to sink behind the trees.

 

* * *

 

Wash had just finished training with the lieutenants when Grey called him down to her lab with news that she’d managed to forge a connection that would allow them to speak with Niner. Taking in a deep breath, he’d swallowed down his excitement and beelined for the armory to get out of his gear, running into Carolina and Kimball once he got there.

“Did Grey call you?” he asked as Carolina pulled off her helmet and stowed it in her locker.

“Yeah,” Carolina replied, making her way over to one of the rigs that would pull off the rest of her armor. “She got the connection set up faster than I thought she would.”

“That’s Grey for you,” Kimball said, taking off her helmet and tucking it under her arm. 

“No kidding,” Wash said, looking over when Carolina stepped off the rig in just her kevlar suit.

“Hurry up and get out of your armor so we can get down there and talk to Niner,” Carolina urged, grabbing a pair of pants and boots out of her locker and tugging them on.

Wash shoved his helmet into his own locker and made his way over to the rig, stepping into it and feeling the machinery unclasp and pull away his armor to stow in a pod. Once the machine was done, he stepped out of it, only to be hit in the face by a pair of pants. “Augh!  _ Hey!” _ he exclaimed, pulling them off and glaring at Carolina, who had a smug look on her face.

“Put them on and let’s  _ go,” _ she urged. To her left, Kimball chuckled into her free hand. 

Wash rolled his eyes and did as he was told, then walked over and took the pair of boots Carolina offered him and tugged them on, leaning against the lockers for support. “There, I’m ready, we can go now,” he said, straightening up. 

Carolina hopped to her feet and said to Kimball “I’ll see you later?”

“I’ll be around,” Kimball replied with a nod. “Tell me how it goes.”

“Will do,” Carolina said, and started towards the exit. “Come on, Wash.”

“Right behind you, boss,” Wash said, following her out of the locker room and into the hallway. “I can’t believe this is actually happening,” he said excitedly.

“Neither can I,” Carolina agreed. “All this time we thought she was dead.”

“And  _ Fox, _ of all people, is the one to figure out she’s not,” Wash mused. “Small world, huh.”

“Sure is,” Carolina said, and fell silent for the rest of the way there, leaving Wash wondering if something was wrong.

By the time they reached the lab, much of his worry had been replaced by a mixture of excitement and apprehension. So much had happened between his time as Recovery One and now. They had so much catching up to do. And he wanted to know all of the details of what Fox would be having her do. He needed to know she would be safe.

When they stepped into the lab, Wash took a deep breath and let Carolina lead him over to where Grey was standing by the quantum computer. When she heard them approaching, she looked up and greeted them with a smile. 

“Well you two certainly didn’t waste any time getting here!” she exclaimed.

“We’re a little anxious to catch up,” Carolina said, and Wash caught the amused look she gave him out of the corner of her eye. 

“I see that. Wash is practically  _ vibrating  _ next to you,” Grey remarked, unplugging a datapad from the computer and walking over to them.

“Niner is a friend. We haven’t spoken in  _ years. _ Of  _ course _ I’m excited,” Wash said.

“Hey, you’ll hear no criticism from me,” Grey replied, handing the datapad over to him. 

Wash took it excitedly, staring down at the interface on the screen. “This’ll just send a call through to her?” he asked, looking up at Grey.

“It’ll connect you to her phone. Fox’s AI is helping with the signal on her end, so you should be able to connect without trouble. Though it may take a few tries before she picks up,” Grey said, shoving her hands into the pockets of her lab coat. 

“Anything else?” Carolina asked.

“Kimball asked that you keep calls to Earth to thirty minutes maximum,” Grey said. “The bandwidth around here is bad enough without the two of you calling your friend.” She then brushed past them and snapped on a pair of gloves before settling down at the workbench where her laptop and the AI storage unit were sitting. 

“Uh, right,” Wash said. 

“Should we stay in here?” Carolina asked.

“The signal is strongest in here, so if you want a clear picture, I’d go with yes,” Grey replied, not looking up from her laptop. 

Wash exchanged a look with Carolina, then walked over to the quantum computer and sat down with his back to it, glancing over when she took a seat next to him. “You ready?” he asked.

“Of course,” Carolina replied, meeting his gaze with a light smile.

Wash nodded, then tapped the call button and waited for the signal to go through. The loading wheel in the middle of the screen spun for a minute, then the window went black, and the sound of music and voices mingling together emitted from the speakers. Then the camera adjusted, and Wash could make out Niner’s dimly lit face.

“Oh, holy shit! It’s you guys!” Niner exclaimed, her voice slightly drowned out by the background noise.

“Is this a bad time?” Carolina asked. 

Niner glanced to the right, then said “no, I’m just chilling with some of my new co-workers. Wanna say hi?” she replied, then tilted the camera to face what looked like the back plot of land behind an apartment building. “Hey everyone! Two of Fox’s friends are on the phone! Say hi!” her voice exclaimed from out of the camera’s view.

A small chorus of voices piped up in greeting, and Wash could make out a handful of people gathered around a grill. “You’re having a cookout?” he asked.

Niner tilted the camera so her face was back on the screen and replied “yeah! Grizzly invited us over for burgers and stuff. I only just got here, but everyone seems pretty cool.”

“Can you introduce us?” Carolina asked. 

“Oh, you want the full tour, huh? Funny, I don’t remember you guys buying tickets,” Niner replied, a grin spreading across her face. Then she looked away from the camera and shouted “I’m gonna introduce you guys! So don’t run off okay?!”

“No promises!” someone called back off-screen.

Niner looked back at the camera and said “alright, I’m gonna take you around. Sit tight.” She moved, and the camera bobbed a bit, and then Wash heard Niner say “Rocket, c’mere a sec,” and suddenly a young, skinny man was pulled into the frame. 

“Oh, uh. Hi!” he said. 

“This is Rocket,” Niner introduced. “He’s our driver and an ex-cop.”

All Wash could think about is how much he wished the kid was around when he first met Grif’s sister. Then she’d have had an  _ actual _ cop to pick on. 

“Nice to meet you,” Carolina said. 

“Uh, same!” Rocket replied, raising a red solo cup in a sort of awkward salute. 

The camera pulled away from him and Wash watched as Niner approached the grill and said “this is Grill-Master Grizzly, ladies and gents.” She turned the camera around like she was taking a selfie, and was joined by a kind of soft-looking fellow with a bushy beard and an undercut. 

“Hallo!” Grizzly greeted, grinning wide. Then he looked at something off-screen and jerked his head towards the camera. “Jersey, c’mere,” he said, then stepped away to be replaced by a man with a scar on his cheek and his hair pulled up in a bun.

“This is Locus’s knock-off brand copy, Jersey,” Niner introduced, eliciting a laugh from the man on-screen.

“Oh my god, we  _ do _ look alike, don’t we?” Jersey asked, grinning wide. 

“You could be brothers,” Grizzly said, off-camera.

Niner just shook her head and pulled the camera away and shouted “Siris! Don’t make me chase you!”

“I’m going to get-- Oh we’re doing this now, huh?” came a new voice. And Niner turned around and held up her camera so Wash and Carolina could see the man approaching her from behind. “Hi there. I think I kind of already know you two, though we never formally met,” he said, offering a small wave.

“Fox tell you about us?” Wash asked.

“I was the second person she recruited onto her team. Rocket was the first. I go by Siris,” he replied. “I was also there when Niner called you guys earlier today. I introduced Fox and Locus to her.”

“Siris and Locus worked together as bounty hunters back in the stone age,” Niner explained. 

“I’m not  _ that _ old,” Siris said, looking at her.

Wash blinked in surprise and exchanged a look with Carolina. Judging by her expression, she was just as disarmed as he was. “You knew Locus before all of this?” he asked, leaning towards the screen slightly.

“We were partners,” Siris replied. “Along with Felix. He...told me what happened.”

“All of it?” Carolina asked.

“All of it,” Siris replied. 

“There’s a  _ story _ here,” Niner observed with a sly grin.

“You’ll hear it eventually,” Siris sighed. 

“I’d better,” Niner said. Then added “well, that’s everyone who’s here. Why don’t we go somewhere quiet so we can talk?”

“You can head up to my apartment if you want!” Grizzly’s voice exclaimed. “I’ll give you my key!”

“Oh, thanks!” Niner called back, then pulled the camera away, causing the screen to go dark for a few seconds before she stepped into the apartment building, giving Wash and Carolina a riveting shot of the tiled floor. The camera turned to face Niner again, and she swept a hand across her brow, letting out a “whew!” as she made her way through the hall. “It’s  _ hot _ out there,” she said, stepping into an elevator. 

“You  _ were _ in front of a grill,” Carolina reminded.

“I know, I know,” Niner said, rolling her eyes.  _ “So  _ fill me in. What have you guys been up to?”

“Getting tangled up with a bunch of Sim Troopers, getting betrayed by The Meta,  _ killing _ The Meta, faking my death and getting disguised as the AI I was sent to retrieve so I didn’t go back to  _ jail _ ,” Wash said.

“Running into Wash, teaming up with Epsilon, killing the Director, crash-landing on Chorus, fighting a civil war that was triggered by Charon Industries,” Carolina added.

“Speaking of which, how much do you and the others know about what happened with that? On Chorus, I mean,” Wash asked.

The elevator chimed, and Niner stepped out, saying “a bunch of it was in the files Fox gave me, and the guys filled me in on what I didn’t have time to read.”

“And that was what, exactly?” Carolina asked, glancing at Wash, looking like she was thinking the same thing he was.

_ “This  _ has to do with that sneaky conversation you guys just had with Siris, doesn’t it?” Niner asked, and a sound off-screen indicated she was unlocking a door. “I heard all about how Fox came up with an alias to fight in the war and worked for Charon and all that. But that’s it,” she said, leaning against the doorframe.

Wash looked over at Carolina, who frowned. It didn’t sound like Locus’ involvement in the civil war on Chorus had been mentioned. Not that he was too surprised. It didn’t make sense to drop that kind of information right off the bat before any sort of team loyalty had been established. Still, the longer it was kept silent, the more of a shock it could become later, and the more it might cripple rapport between everyone involved. 

“What do I need to know?” Niner asked, opening the door she had unlocked and stepping through. “If it’s important, then I want to-- _ Kitty!” _

Wash stifled a snicker, and watched as the camera was pointed down to show a tabby cat approaching Niner’s feet.

“Wash  _ look!” _ Niner exclaimed.

“I see,” Wash replied, glancing over when Carolina buried her face in a hand, barely concealing her smile.

“It’s name is  _ Truffles!” _ Niner exclaimed, checking the cat’s tag on it’s collar. “Oh, that’s  _ such _ a good name, kitty!” she gushed, then straightened up, walked a little ways, then sat down on a couch backed against a wall. “Okay, so we were talking about what I needed to know about Chorus,” she said, getting settled and holding her phone so Wash and Carolina could clearly see her face.

“There’s just...certain people were involved with the conflict here,” Carolina replied slowly.

“Are their names Fox and Locus?” Niner asked flatly.

Carolina opened her mouth to speak, then, to Wash’s surprise, she shut it and looked over at him.

He shook his head. “I think we should let this one surface on its own,” he said.

“So you’re  _ not _ telling me?” Niner asked, sounding a little annoyed.

Wash cringed and looked back at her. “It’s…I believe that you’ll find out what you need to find out, when it’s the right time to hear it.”

“Ooooh, how  _ cryptic,” _ Niner said dryly. 

“Wash,” Carolina said. “Are you sure about this?”

“If Siris knows, then the information will probably be shared again. After some time and trust has built up,” Wash replied.

“Niner, you met Fox. Was Locus there too?” Carolina asked, looking back at the screen.

“Yeah,” Niner replied. “Why?”

“Just wondering,” Carolina said. Then she asked “what did you think of them?”

Niner shrugged. “Fox seemed a little shifty, but Siris seems to trust her, and he doesn’t trust  _ anyone,  _ so I guess I trust her too.”

“You know him well?” Wash asked. It sounded like her and Siris had history.

“Yeah, I met him and his wife at a bar shortly after I got out of jail. They helped me with my Fantasy Football lineup,” Niner replied. “Wash, I think you’d like him a lot, actually. He’s pretty cool.”

“You don’t think  _ I’d _ like him?” Carolina asked, an amused half-smile on her face. 

“You hate losing, and his F-F lineup  _ kills _ every year, so no,” Niner replied.

“Wow.”

Wash just rolled his eyes. “So what about Locus?” he asked, curious. He’d only known Locus as he was on Chorus. On Earth, subject to so much change all at once, he had to be a  _ little _ different, right?

“Quiet with a thousand-yard stare,” Niner replied. “He didn’t speak a whole lot, but he kind of had this attitude like he didn’t want to be there. Him and Fox also didn’t show up at the party here, but  _ Fox _ had an excuse since she’s the boss and has work to do. He just sounded like he wanted nothing to do with any of us.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right,” Wash sighed. 

“Do you like,  _ know _ the guy?” Niner asked, looking back and forth between him and Carolina.

“He was here on Chorus with us for a little bit before Fox and him went to Earth,” Carolina replied tactfully.

“What’s his deal? Is that just his personality, or…”

“I think he probably has some trust issues,” Wash replied, cringing a little. He wasn’t too comfortable with talking about another person behind their back like this, even if it  _ was _ Locus. “He went through some stuff here that...put him in a tough spot.”

“But he seems to trust Fox,” Niner said, narrowing her eyes. “Way I saw it, he seems kind of like her lap dog.”

“They’ve been teammates for a few months now, so he’s used to her,” Carolina said. 

“So he just needs to warm up to us a bit?” Niner asked. “I can work with that.”

“I mean, no guarantees, but I think the more he gets to know you, the less...unwelcoming he’ll probably be,” Wash replied.

“Hopefully,” Niner huffed. “Guy looks like he’s never told a joke in his life. I don’t know what I’d do with a teammate who doesn’t have a sense of humor,” she said, and looked right at Wash.

He flipped her the bird. 

“So what about you? What happened to you? I know you mentioned jail time,” Carolina asked.

Niner shifted her position and said “after I got out of jail, I started working as an engineer for private jets and shit. It’s mostly contract work, but I’ve got a few frequent clients who collect like, old biplanes and shit. One of them works for a museum. It’s pretty cool, and it pays the bills, but I miss flying. A lot. Working with Fox gives me a chance to do what I love again.”

“Cool,” Wash said, hesitating a bit before asking “did you get...discharged?”

“Dishonorably,” Niner replied, a bitter half-smile on her face. “You’d have gotten the same thing if you hadn’t faked your death, probably.”

“I’m sorry,” Wash said.

“Yeah, well,” Niner looked away. “Nothing we can do about it now. At least Fox doesn’t seem to care.”

“I didn’t think she would,” Carolina said, glancing over at Grey, then looking at Wash. “Our time’s almost up,” she warned.

“You guys have a time limit?” Niner asked.

“Yeah,” Wash replied. “Thirty minutes so we don’t back up the bandwidth.”

“Wow, you guys must be in the space boonies, huh? Gross,” Niner said. “Well anyways, I’m glad you guys called.”

“It was nice talking to you. We’ll let you know when we’re free to chat again,” Carolina said. 

“Yeah, do that. I’d appreciate it,” Niner replied. “I’ll see you later?”

“Definitely,” Wash replied with a nod, then ended the chat. 

Both him and Carolina sat in silence for a moment before the latter spoke up, saying “you’re putting a lot of faith in Locus, you know.”

“I know,” Wash replied. “But it’s not going to help anyone if  _ we’re _ the ones going around telling Fox’s teammates what he did here. We’re trying to get him to trust us.”

“I know,” Carolina said. She was quiet for a moment, then a small smile appeared on her face as she learned her head back against the quantum computer. 

“What?” Wash asked, wondering what she found so amusing.

“I’m just thinking that it’s probably a good thing that Locus didn’t tell Niner everything that he did right off the bat,” Carolina said. “If Niner found out what he did to you...I feel like Fox would have called in with a casualty report. Niner would have  _ definitely _ killed him.”

“You think so?” Wash asked, a smile forming on his face.

“I  _ know _ so,” Carolina replied, rising to her feet and offering him her hand. He took it, and she pulled him up, asking “wanna go grab dinner?”

Wash set the datapad down on the seat in front of the quantum computer, saying “right behind you,” and let her lead him out of the lab, the two of them bidding Grey farewell on the way out.

 

* * *

 

_ Maybe this wasn’t a good idea, _ Simmons thought as he stood with his back to the wall next to the door leading into the motor pool. Minutes ago, he had walked down to the sublevel with the full intent to talk to Grif, but now that he was here, his nerves were throwing him through a vicious cycle of what-if’s. 

Simmons tilted his head towards the floor and squeezed his eyes shut, taking a deep breath and thinking,  _ okay Simmons, remember what Donut said. The worst thing he can do is say no.  _ Simmons looked up, biting his lip, and thought  _ oh god, what if he says no? _ His eyes darted over to the door, and he stared anxiously at it for a moment before he sucked in a deep breath and straightened out.  _ No. Okay. You’ll be okay. You can do this. It’s just Grif, right?  _ Simmons nodded to himself, feeling some of his confidence come back. And forcing a straight face, he stepped away from the wall and turned and walked through the door...right into Grif.

“Ow fuck!” he exclaimed when his face connected with Grif’s helmet. He stumbled back, a hand over his nose.

“Where the hell did you come from?” Grif asked, sounding equally surprised.

Simmons rubbed his nose, grimacing when he smelled blood and sniffling hard to try to suck it back into his head. “I--sorry! I was just--”

“Dude, your nose is bleeding.”

“I  _ know! _ It’s because of your helmet--”

Grif waved a hand at Simmons to silence him and turned and walked over to one of the workbenches, pulling a shop rag off a roll before returning and handing it over. “Here. Lopez will have a fucking fit if you get any of that on the floor after he just mopped.”

Simmons took the shop rag, turning it over to make sure it was clean before he held it over his nose. “Lopez mopped?”

“Yeah. I told him not to, because this is literally a fucking motor pool, so nobody cares, but he hit me with the mop, so I just let him,” Grif replied. “How’s your nose?”

“Still bleeding.”

“Yeah. Right. I didn’t know you were there, so…”

“Apology accepted,” Simmons said.

Grif just nodded and asked “so did you  _ need _ something? Or…”

Simmons blinked, then suddenly decided that the shop rag he was holding to his face was  _ very _ interesting, and focused his gaze on it instead of Grif. “Oh, uh...I-I was gonna ask you if...maybe you wanted to do something later?”

“I’m already doing a lot of stuff right now,” Grif replied unenthusiastically, crossing his arms.

“N-no I mean like...something fun,” Simmons elaborated.

“So what, like join the lieutenants in a game of capture the flag or something?” Grif asked, leaning forward slightly.

“No. Not like that. J-just the two of us.”

Grif was silent for a moment, then uncrossed his arms and took a deep breath and asked “why?”

Simmons blinked, startled by the question. “B-because we haven’t y’know really had a whole lot of time to talk alone and now that Fox and Locus are gone and things are getting back to normal and stuff I thought that maybe we could have a chance to catch up and spend some time together and just not have to worry about important stuff like pirates or wars or getting shot at and maybe--”

Grif held up a hand to stop him and said “okay. Hold on. Slow the fuck down.”

Simmons snapped his mouth shut and swallowed hard, immediately regretting doing so when the taste of blood flooded the back of his tongue. “S-sorry,” he croaked, trying not to gag.

Grif didn’t say anything, but watched him closely for a moment. Then he straightened up and clapped his hands together and pointed them at Simmons and asked “what are you trying to ask me here?”

Simmons met his gaze, nerves making his heart feel like he had just climbed Mount Everest. “D-Donut said that with all of the stuff going on...maybe it would be good for us to hang out,” he replied.

“Donut said--? Wait a minute, are you asking me on a  _ date?” _

“No!” Simmons exclaimed, panicking.  _ DAMNIT! _

Grif relaxed a little bit, dropping his hands back to his sides. “Okay. I mean-- Okay.”

Simmons couldn’t help but wonder if the slight sinking of Grif’s shoulders was from relief or disappointment. “S-so...are you in?”

“I don’t have anything better to do today,” Grif replied with a shrug.

“So yes?” Simmons asked hopefully.

“I guess. Just as long as it doesn’t take too long. I need some fucking sleep,” Grif said. He nodded at the shop rag in Simmons’ hand. “Is that still bleeding?”

“Huh? Oh!” Simmons frowned and pulled the rag away from his face, sniffling experimentally. Everything tasted and smelled like blood, but it didn’t feel like he was sucking anything back into his throat. “Yeah, I think it’s good now.”

“Good,” Grif said. 

Simmons crumpled up the shop rag and crossed his arms, looking back at Grif. “So...what do you want to do?”

“I thought you were the one with all the plans?”

Simmons felt his face get warm with embarrassment. “W-well  _ yeah! _ But if there’s something  _ you _ wanna do--”

“Just tell me what you had in mind,” Grif said, sounding a little impatient.

Simmons looked away. “I thought about going to the lookout by that satellite Grey put up. T-the view is really nice over there, so…”

“Sounds good,” Grif said, shifting his weight. “What time?”

“Whenever you’re done with stuff here, just let me know,” Simmons replied.

“Great. We can meet by the entrance to the cave,” Grif said, then nodded past Simmons and added “so if we’re done, can you move? You’re blocking the only exit, and I was on my way to the vending machine when I ran into you.”

“O-oh! Sorry!” Simmons exclaimed, side-stepping and letting Grif walk past him. “I’ll see you later!” he called after him, poking his head out the door.

Grif just held up a hand in a wave and didn’t look back as he walked down the hall.

Simmons watched him until he turned a corner, then leaned back into the motor pool and buried his face in his free hand with a groan. That hadn’t gone at  _ all _ like he’d wanted it to. 

 

* * *

 

[  **_FoxNews_ ** _ added  _ **_User84392_ ** _ to the chat. _ ]

[  **_User84392_ ** _ changed their name to  _ **_Pielot._ ** ]

[  **_FoxNews:_ ** _ everyone, this is ur new pilot. Her name is Niner. Be nice _ ]

[  **_JerseyBoiii:_ ** _ HI AGAIN NEW GIRL _ ]

[  **_PopitRockit:_ ** _ o/ _

[  **_BeardBear:_ ** _ welcome! _

[  **_Pielot:_ ** _ u know they already met me right? _ ]

[  **_FoxNews:_ ** _ shhhhhhhh _ ]

[  **_xXLocusXx:_ ** _ You wound up meeting Siris the other night? _ ]

[  **_Pielot:_ ** _ yes also what the FUCK is your username? Are you 12? _ ]

[  **_xXLocusXx:_ ** _ Fox changed it and for some reason I can’t alter it. _ ]

[  **_FoxNews:_ ** _ >:3c  _ ]

[  **_Pielot:_ ** _ nice _ ]

[  **_FoxNews:_ ** _ also yo i just got a text from Sanchez saying we got some stuff delivered to the warehouse to unpack.  _ ]

[  **_FoxNews:_ ** _ if anyone can head over there to help out that would be A+ _ ]

[  **_PopitRockit:_ ** _ omw _ ]

[  **_Pielot:_ ** _ in a bit. I have important pilot stuff to do. _ ]

[  **_JerseyBoiii:_ ** _ like listen to Danger Zone from Top Gun? _ ]

[  **_Pielot:_ ** _ FUCK  _ ]

[  **_Pielot:_ ** _ LIKE ACTUALLY IMPORTANT STUFF _ ]

[  **_Pielot:_ ** _ but yeah def some of that too _ ]

[ **_Siris77:_ ** _ we’re having some work done on our house and I need to be home for it. Sorry. _ ]

[ ** _Fox News:_** _all good amigo_ ]

[  **_BeardBear:_ ** _ I went and bought a bunch of soda and canned goods and stuff for the fridge  _ ]

[  **_BeardBear:_ ** _ can I bring that? _ ]

[  **_JerseyBoiii:_ ** _ overachiever _ ]

[  **_FoxNews:_ ** _ ye but in the future let me do that cuz im rich af _ ]

[ **_BeardBear:_ ** _ k _ ]

[  **_JerseyBoiii:_ ** _ I’ll head over for a bit  _ ]

[  **_FoxNews:_ ** _ neato thanks guys. See u all there  _ ]

 

* * *

 

“How on  _ earth _ did all of this stuff get down here?” Jersey asked, nodding at the equipment that had been added to the warehouse armory. 

It was the first thing everyone had noticed when they’d taken the lift down to the first sublevel. And when he saw the armor rig that had been set up, Locus found himself wondering the same thing Jersey had just vocalized.

“The lift probably,” Niner replied, brushing past and heading over to the stack of crates that had been piled up next to one of the shelves. 

“Sanchez was here when this stuff was dropped off. The rig was probably brought down in pieces and assembled. But the armor likely came down as it is, so it’s a good thing the lift can hold several tons,” Fox explained with a nod, following her.

_ “Jesus! _ How much does that armor  _ weigh?” _ Rocket exclaimed, walking over on wobbly legs to the mini-fridge and plopping the box of canned goods in his arms down next to it with a  _ thud. _

“Several tons,” Fox replied flatly as she set down the bag she had been carrying and located a crowbar and started prying one of the crates open.

“Where do you want the rest of this?” Locus asked, nodding at the boxes he and Grizzly were holding when she looked back at him.

“Uh...mini-fridge,” she replied. “I should probably look into getting a full one, huh?”

“Dudes gotta eat,” Grizzly piped up on his way past.

Locus followed him, eyeing the contents of the crate Fox had opened as he walked by. “More ammunition?” he asked.

“Looks like,” Fox sighed, wiping her hands off on her jeans. “Can’t say I’m surprised. This whole operation is kind of a secret, so the U.N.S.C. is probably stocking us up early so they don’t have to make a bunch of supply runs later.”

_ Understandable, _ Locus thought, stopping next to Grizzly and handing his box off to him when the other man set his own box down. 

“I probably brought too much,” Grizzly sighed, looking at the contents of the box before he stacked it on top of the other two. 

“Hey, we don’t have to keep all of it cold,” Fox said, sliding the crate she had just opened so one of its corners hung over the edge of the stack. Rocket hurried over to help, realizing she was trying to lift it off of the others, but she shooed him away. “You’ve got noodle arms,” she said. 

Locus watched the exchange, then walked over with a sigh. “Let me help.”

“My hero,” Fox said with a crooked grin, and together they moved the crate off of the stack and set it down on the floor. 

“Want me to start unpacking these other ones?” Jersey asked, jerking a thumb towards the crates Niner was standing near.

Fox looked over at them from where she was still crouched on the floor. “What’s in them?”

“Repair kits, looks like,” Niner replied.

“For what?” Fox asked, standing up.  
Jersey shrugged. “Doesn’t specify.”

“Watch yourself,” Fox said, and Locus stepped back out of her way as she picked up the crowbar and tossed it to Jersey, who caught it one-handed. “Crack ‘em open and find out.”

“I’ll just stand here and look pretty,” Niner said.

Jersey rolled his eyes and started popping open the crates.

“Shouldn’t there be an inventory list somewhere that tells us what’s in all of these?” Locus asked, looking back at Fox.

“Probably. I can text Sanchez. He probably still has it,” Fox replied, hopping over a crate to get another crowbar off of the shelf. “If you wanna get started unpacking that, I’ll pop open the rest of these and join you,” she added, nodding at the crate she had opened. 

Locus just nodded and got to work.

They spent the next few hours unpacking most of the wooden crates before Fox called for a lunch break, surprising all of them when she pulled sandwiches out of the bag she had brought with her and handed them out. 

“You packed us  _ lunch?” _ Rocket exclaimed after he’d gotten his.

Fox shrugged, flipping over one of the empty crates and sitting down on it. “Jersey called me mom in the group chat.”

Jersey, who had just taken a bite of his sandwich, made a choking sound and clapped a hand over his mouth, spluttering out “I was  _ kidding!” _

“So? Go big or go home, right?” Fox replied with a smirk, then bit into her sandwich. 

“When did you find the time to do this?” Locus asked, looking over at her.

“Right before we left.”

“You know I brought like... _ canned _ goods, right?” Grizzly asked, leaning against one of the shelves and looking over at Fox.

“My mom was a famous chef and I was stuck on a moon for four years eating nothing but MRE’s,” Fox retorted. “I deserve better.”

Beside Grizzly, Rocket snickered. 

“So when’s our first  _ real _ mission?” Niner asked. 

“I’m still looking into connections to see where we should hit first,” Fox replied. “But I’m probably going to reach out to a contact Sachs told me about to see if I can get more people to help us out.”

Locus looked over at her, frowning. They already had a team. Just how big did she plan on making this operation? “What’s your endgame?”

Fox leaned forward and covered her mouth, laughing, then looked over at him. “Jeeze, you make it sound so serious. ‘What’s your endgame?”

Locus gave her an annoyed look. 

“If looks could kill.  _ Jesus,” _ Fox mused, looking away and taking a sip from her water bottle. “I’m just trying to get as many people on our side as possible so we have enough force to withstand a retaliation.”

Locus narrowed his eyes, glancing over when Rocket said “a retaliation? Like from Charon?”

“Yup,” Fox replied, taking a bite of her sandwich. 

“The chairman  _ was _ put in a tough spot,” Grizzly said. “If we start hitting him where it hurts, he could get desperate.” He looked over at Fox and nodded. “She’s got the right idea. We  _ want _ bigger numbers. A small group like us can do a lot of damage, but we won’t survive something like what Charon might throw at us.”

“Such as?” Locus asked, curiosity piqued by Grizzly’s response.

“Eat your damn sandwich,” Fox spoke up, not looking at him.

Locus fixed her in a glare, but did as he was told. 

“Shit, I don’t know,” Grizzly replied. “I mean, if we do it wrong, they could make us out to be terrorists or something. I imagine this wasn’t exactly an easy operation to get approved.”

“It wasn’t,” Fox said.

“Yeah, so if Charon makes  _ us _ look like the bad guys, then they won’t have anyone working against us, because the U.N.S.C. will cut our funding...or whatever.”

_ Interesting, _ Locus thought, looking over at Fox, who seemed to be contemplating what Grizzly said. 

“Technically Charon already thinks there are terrorists on their ass,” Fox replied. “They have an idea that  _ someone _ is trying to hurt them, but they don’t know it’s us yet.”

“How do you know that?” Rocket asked, taking another bite of his sandwich.

“Wait, from that representative that contacted you, right?” Jersey asked, leaning back against the armor rig. 

“Yeah. I take it you read that wall of text I sent out a few days ago?” Fox replied, raising an eyebrow.

“I would hope  _ most _ of us did,” Niner said, taking a bite of her sandwich.

“Uh, I  _ did...  _ I just didn’t know it had anything to do with this,” Rocket added.

“Well, at least he’s  _ cute,” _ Niner said with a grin, earning herself a confused look from Rocket.

Fox just gave him an amused smile before finishing off her sandwich and wiping her hands on her pants. Grizzly did the same and tossed his trash into the garbage can next to the mini-fridge before walking over and starting to work on the boxes of goods he had brought.

“Are you going to share everything with the rest of them?” Locus asked Fox.

“Well they’re our teammates,” Fox replied.

“I’m aware,” Locus said, hoping that the implications of his concerns surrounding the fact that they had only just  _ met _ all of their teammates had translated well enough in his tone.

“You know you can trust us, right?” Jersey said from the other side of the armory, an amused grin on his face.

Locus met his gaze evenly, then said “we’ll see.”

“Just tell me what I gotta do to prove it,” Jersey chuckled, then finished off his sandwich. “So whose armor is this?” he asked, rapping his knuckles against the pod holding Fox’s power armor.

“That would be mine,” Fox replied.

“Nice! Any chance the rest of us could get ours shipped in?” Jersey asked, turning to her and sticking his thumbs in his pockets.

Next to him, Niner widened her eyes in a sort of ‘yeah right’ expression as she finished off her sandwich.

“Ehhh,” Fox said, looking over at him with uncertainty, “if you need it. I’ll have to talk to Sachs about that.”

“Who’s Sachs?” Grizzly asked, rifling through one of the boxes. 

“He’s the one who got our operation here approved by the U.N.S.C.” Fox replied. “We basically owe him everything.”

“Neat,” Grizzly said, unpacking the box’s contents before breaking it down.

Jersey walked over and threw away his trash before crouching down to help him. 

“I’m gonna go back to organizing these shelves, because they’re a mess,” Niner announced, tossing her trash out before marching over to set about her task.

“What’s next?” Rocket asked, crumpling up the saran wrap his sandwich had been wrapped in and putting it in his pocket. 

Fox stood and said “we can move all these empty crates off to the other side of the partition. We’ve got a storage space over there.”

“Okay,” Rocket replied, grabbing one of the empty crates and starting to drag it away. 

“He’s going to throw out his back,” Locus commented, watching him.

Fox chuckled. “Careful, you might make it sound like you care.”

Locus side-eyed her, then said “two people will get it done faster,” then walked over to pick up the crate Fox had just been sitting on.

“Gimme that,” Fox said, nodding at the saran wrap he had balled up in one hand.

Locus handed it off to her, and watched as she turned and tossed it at the trash can across the armory, jumping up in the air with excitement and shouting “Kobe!” when it went in.

_ “God _ that meme is so  _ old!” _ Jersey exclaimed, looking back over his shoulder at her.

“So am I,” Fox replied.

“Hey now, we’re almost the same age!” Niner warned.

Locus just rolled his eyes and picked up the crate, tucking it under one arm before carrying it to the other side of the partition. He passed Rocket on the way, noting how the bounce in the kid’s step had all but faded.  _ Tired already, _ he thought, annoyed. Sure, they needed a driver, but he still couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that Fox had chosen to hire someone who was so useless at pretty much everything else. 

_ Whatever, _ Locus thought, stacking the crate on top of the one Rocket had dragged over and heading back. It was above his pay-grade, and it’s not like he would ever understand what went through Fox’s head, as eccentric as she was.

Sighing, he rounded the corner just in time to hear Jersey ask “yo what time is it?” 

Locus glanced at his watch. “Three.”

“Oh, shit.”

“What’s wrong?” Fox asked, walking past with a box balanced on her shoulder. 

Jersey looked after her and replied “uh, so I do this thing where I knit sweaters for dogs at a couple of local shelters, and I’m supposed to drop off some stuff before helping with a photoshoot at one of the kennels in like, a half-hour.”

Fox set the box down then turned and nodded at him. “Go. You’ll be late.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, we’re pretty much done here,” Fox replied, surveying the space. “In fact, why don’t the rest of you guys head out?” 

Jersey rose to his feet and offered Grizzly a hand, which the other man took, then suggested “let’s all grab one of those crates before we head out.”

“You read my mind,” Grizzly said, walking past him and hefting one of the empty crates onto his shoulder.

Locus did the same and followed him as he walked around the partition, passing Jersey and Rocket on his way back. 

Fox waited until everyone was back in the armory before speaking up. “Well, thanks for all your help. With any luck, we won’t have to do this much unpacking very often.”

“Hey, it gave me something to do,” Rocket shrugged. “I’d’ve just stayed in bed otherwise.”

“Y’know, NASA will pay you to do that, I hear,” Niner said as she finished off organizing the shelf she was working on.

Fox raised an eyebrow, but looked over at Jersey and said “alright, all of you get out of here. I know you have stuff to do. I’ll text you all in the group chat if anything else comes up.”

Jersey gave her a two-fingered salute before turning and walking towards the lift, the others not far behind him. 

Locus watched them go, then turned back to Fox as she picked up the box she had been carrying before and started walking over towards the holo-table on the other side of the room. “Do you need help?” he asked after her.

“Naw. It’s not heavy,” Fox replied. “But you can follow me and we’ll talk.”

Locus felt a stab of dread. His social battery was running low. But he did as he was told and let her lead him to the holo table, where she set the box down. “Well?”

Fox looked up at him, an amused smile on her face, then she said “they’re not all bad, you know.”

Locus sighed inwardly and braced for an argument. “We can’t trust them with everything right away.”

“Buddy, don’t forget that I have access to all their info. If I thought they were untrustworthy, I wouldn’t have hired them,” Fox replied.

“You hired me,” Locus said flatly.

“Yeah, and I trust you.”

“You barely  _ know _ me.”

“True. But I  _ do _ know that you’re a terrible liar who’s  _ completely _ helpless without your morning coffee, so that’s good enough,” Fox replied.

Locus raised an eyebrow at her, but didn’t say anything, looking on when she suddenly pulled her phone out of her pocket and frowned at it. 

“Huh, it’s Siris,” Fox said, looking surprised, then she picked up the call and said “hey, what’s up?”

Locus followed her with his eyes as she walked past, her free hand shoved into the pocket of her jeans. 

“Wait, really? That’s so sweet of you!”

_ What? _ Locus thought. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll let him know,” Fox continued, glancing over her shoulder back at him. “Seven? Alright, cool. We’ll see you then! Byeeee!” She hung up and shoved the phone into her back pocket, walking back over to the holo table.

“What was that?” Locus asked. It had  _ sounded _ like she was making  _ plans. _

“Siris’s wife wants us to come over for dinner tonight,” Fox replied, picking up the box she had set down.

“That’s a terrible idea,” Locus replied quickly.

“Why?” Fox asked, walking over and setting the box down in front of the metal shelf rack backed against the partition.

“It just... _ is.” _

“There’s not like, bad blood or anything between you and her, is there?” Fox asked, looking back at him skeptically before pulling the scissors out of her back pocket and using them to cut the tap on the top of the box. 

Locus looked away. Up until recently, Meg probably thought that he was the reason her husband got shot. There was no way any ill will she had towards him had faded so quickly.  _ Especially _ considering she hadn’t seemed terribly fond of him and Felix to begin with. 

_ “Sunshiiiiiiine,”  _ Fox said in a low, wary voice. 

“You know what happened to Siris,” Locus said, looking back at her. 

“Yeah, but that was cleared up,” Fox replied.

“It’s not that simple.”

“Okay, so what’s the problem?” Fox asked, beginning to unpack the box’s contents and setting them on the lowest shelf.

“Meg…” Locus narrowed his eyes, trying to think of how he wanted to word everything. “Meg was never fond of Siris becoming a bounty hunter, nor the company he chose to work with.”

“You could just say she didn’t like you. It’s less syllables,” Fox said flatly.

Locus gave her a look. “All I’m saying is that this  _ isn’t _ going to be a happy reunion.”

“I mean,  _ I’ll _ be there. She doesn’t know  _ me _ yet. Maybe it’ll go smoother than you think. It’s not like she’s going to put all of her focus on you,” Fox said as she finished unpacking the box and folded it down flat before shoving it behind the metal shelf rack. 

“She’s not going to like you either,” Locus said.

Fox let out a snort of laughter and looked over at him.  _ “You  _ didn’t like me when we first met either!”

_I’m still debating whether or not I do_ ** _now,_** Locus thought. 

“Look, just... _ indulge _ them,” Fox said, rising to her feet and dusting her pants off. “Siris reached out to  _ us. _ It sounds to me like he’s looking to try to rebuild the trust you two had in each other.”

Locus looked away. She had a point, but he still wasn’t confident with the idea of going over there and trying to pretend that everything was fine. 

“It’ll only be for a few hours,” Fox said, leaning a shoulder against the partition. “Plus it’s good business to keep relations like this. And it’ll only look weird if I’m the only one who shows up.”

Locus looked back at her, the desire to argue slowly creeping away from him. “Fine,” he sighed.

This was a terrible idea.

 

* * *

 

_ This is a terrible idea, _ Locus thought as he followed Fox up to the front door of the Wu residence. “This isn’t going to go well,” he grumbled when they reached the top of the steps. 

“What makes you say that?” Fox asked, glancing over at him as she rang the doorbell.

“Last time I came here, Meg pointed a shotgun in my face,” Locus replied flatly.

Fox’s eyes narrowed. “Did you deserve it?” she asked.

Locus was about to respond when the door opened and suddenly Meg was standing there. She looked a lot better than she had the last time he’d seen her, he observed. No eyes reddened with tears with mascara running down her cheeks and a snarl on her face. Nevertheless, she didn’t look happy to see him.

Thankfully, Fox spoke up quickly and said “well hi there! You must be Meg!  _ Gosh, _ I love your house, it’s so  _ cute!” _

Meg’s eyes slid over to her, and a bright smile appeared on her face. “Awww, aren’t you sweet? You must be Pepper! Come on in,” she said, and stepped out of the doorway to let them through. 

Locus followed Fox, looking away when he caught Meg’s gaze.

“Honey? Your friends are here,” Meg called out as she led Fox and Locus to the kitchen.

“Welcome, welcome!” Siris greeted, looking up from the stove at the pair. 

_ “Who _ is your interior decorator?” Fox asked, looking around. “This place looks like a set right out of  _ Lifestyle _ magazine.”

“Oh  _ hush, _ you,” Meg grinned as she brushed past her husband to get to the fridge. “You two want anything to drink?”

Locus shook his head, and looked over as Fox announced “no thanks, but I got something  _ you _ might wanna try,” setting the bottle of wine she had tucked under her arm on the bar counter. 

“I was  _ wondering _ what that was,” Meg mused, shutting the refrigerator door and walking over to pick up the bottle, examining it. “Twenty-four seventy-seven. Wow.”

“Oh, tell me she didn’t bring a ten-grand bottle of wine over,” Siris said.

“It’s not like I’m gonna go bankrupt,” Fox replied flatly with an amused grin on her face. 

Siris just rolled his eyes and went back to cooking. 

“How’re we looking?” Meg asked him.

“Five minutes,” Siris replied.

“I’ll text Olivia and have her come down,” Meg said, picking her phone up off the kitchen island.

As she did so, it occurred to Locus that it had been  _ years _ since he’d last seen Siris and Meg’s daughter. She had been little when he first met her, and a part of him wondered if she’d even remember who he was.  _ Probably not, _ he thought, looking over when he heard Fox speak up again.

“So what do  _ you _ do, Meg?”

“I’m an attorney,” Meg replied, pulling some plates down from one of the overhead cabinets and setting them on the counter next to the stove. “I deal with the people my husband drags to the police station.”

“Uh-huh,” Fox said, leaning against the bar counter, and amused expression on her face.

“What about you? I hear you just got a promotion, right?”

“CEO of Emblem,” Fox replied with little fanfare. “Outside of the paperwork and catching bad guys, I dabble in biomechanical engineering--Oh  _ hello!” _

Locus followed Fox’s gaze to the young girl that had just rounded the corner into the kitchen. She eyed him and Fox curiously, then looked over at Siris.

“This is out daughter, Olivia,” Siris said. “Olivia, this is Ms. Fox, and...do you remember Mr. Ortez?”

Olivia looked over at Locus, who said “you were young when we met.”

“When I was...six,” Olivia said, her eyes brightening suddenly. “You came to a few of my soccer games with dad, right?”

Locus nodded.

“You play soccer?” Fox asked. 

“I’m the defensive midfielder!” Olivia said, beaming. 

“Soup’s on,” Siris said before Olivia could explain further. “Guests first. Grab your plates.”

Everyone grabbed their food and met in the dining room, taking their seats around the table. And Fox brought the bottle of wine, cheerfully insisting that everyone save for Olivia try some. 

Meg and Siris had outdone themselves, Locus thought. The table was set like they had been expecting royalty, with chargers and fine China, and the food looked  _ amazing. _

“Y’know, I’ve only ever had penne alla vodka with like, leftover ham from Thanksgiving,” Fox said, taking a bite. “But chicken is an  _ amazing _ call for this. It came out,  _ really _ good.”

“Thanks,” Siris said. “It’s my first time making this, so I’m glad it came out alright.”

“You did wonderful,” Meg said with a grin.

“Isn’t Vodka alcohol?” Olivia asked.

“It burns out when you cook with it. It’s just there for the taste,” Siris explained.

“Ohhh,” Olivia said, taking a bite.

“So what’s a defensive midfielder?” Fox asked, taking a sip of her wine. 

“I keep the other team from scoring. Or try to,” Olivia replied.

“Cool,” Fox said. “You play a lot of sports?”

“Just soccer,” Olivia said, cutting a piece of chicken in half. “Do  _ you _ play sports?”

“Not anymore. I’m too busy doing science stuff. But in high school I was a figure skater,” Fox replied.

“Wow,” Olivia said, her eyes wide. “Were you in the Olympics?”

“I was never that good, no,” Fox replied with a smile. “But I had a lot of fun with it.”

“Did you fall a lot?”

“Yeah. But I learned not to. It’s kind of scary falling over on the ice when your classmates are practicing around you, skating around on what are  _ basically _ knife shoes. You have to learn to stay upright so you don’t get hurt,” Fox explained.

“Is that how you got that scar on your nose?” Olivia asked.

_ “Olivia,” _ both Siris and Meg said in unison, looking over at her.

Fox just laughed. “No, no. It’s fine, really!” she said, waving them off. Then to Olivia she said “I didn’t get it from figure skating. That would have been  _ awful. _ I actually got it in a knife fight with a shark.”

“Yeah  _ right,” _ Olivia said, looking like she didn’t believe her.

“Nah, nah. Listen,” Fox said, an almost comically serious look forming on her face. “So I was going to meet with this guy for a proposition for a new robot arm prototype that I was looking into collaborating on with him, but when I got to his estate, I fell through a trap door and into a shark tank. And there was this  _ big _ shark with chainsaw arms, because he lost his fins to Chinese fishermen so the guy I was supposed to meet with gave him chainsaws instead. It also turned out that he was trying to steal my blueprints for himself. Which was why he was trying to kill me.  _ Anyways _ , so I fought the shark, but we had this moment where we looked into each other's eyes and we realized we weren't that different. So we teamed up and fought Mr. Jerkface together. It was cool. We still meet up for coffee every Sunday."

By the time Fox had finished her story, Olivia was giggling up a fit, and said “that’s a  _ way _ better story than how Mr. Ortez got his scar.”

Fox gave Locus an amused grin and asked “oh yeah? What’d he tell you?”

“That he got it running with scissors,” Olivia replied earnestly.

Fox tried and failed to stifle a burst of laughter and wound up burying her face in her hands. “You told her  _ what?!” _ she gasped out breathlessly, looking over at Locus with watery eyes after she’d managed to calm down a little.

“I was  _ trying _ to teach her a lesson,” Locus replied, unamused.  _ He _ thought it had been  _ helpful.  _

“To be fair, she never runs with scissors,” Siris added, a goofy grin on his face.

_ “See?” _ Locus said pointedly to Fox. 

She sniffled, a few more giggles coming out of her as she wiped her eyes. “Yeah, okay. Fair enough. It just took me off guard is all.”

The rest of their dinner was...good. Locus didn’t really focus too much on it, and instead honed all of his attention in on everything Fox was saying. From a business standpoint, he understood how this whole evening was important, but from a social standpoint, it was draining. And by the time everyone was finished eating, Locus really just wanted to go home.

“I call  _ dibs _ on cleanup,” Fox declared as they all headed back to the kitchen.

“No, you’re a guest,” Meg said, puting her plate and silverware in the dishwasher.

“True, but you guys cooked. And it’ll give me something to do that  _ doesn’t _ involve talking your ears off,” Fox replied, doing the same.

“Home field advantage,” Siris spoke up, a little smugly, plopping his dinnerware into the sink and pulling out a sponge and soap.  _ “I’ll _ do the cleaning. You guys sit and talk some more.”

“Monkey, why don’t you head on up and get showered?” Meg said to Olivia.

“Can I read afterwards?” Olivia asked, putting away her dishes and finishing her glass of water before putting it in the dishwasher.

“Until nine,” Meg replied with a nod, putting the bottle of wine Fox had brought into the fridge. “Your dad or myself will be up to check on you.”

“Okay!” Olivia chirped. “Goodnight everyone!”

The four adults in the room all met her with a chorus of goodbye’s.

Once she was out of earshot, Meg looked back towards Fox, and in a low voice asked “so you’re in charge of the operation my husband’s joined. How long is this whole thing supposed to last?”

Fox leaned against the kitchen island and replied “not sure. We’re playing it by ear. It’s going to last as long as it takes to get the chairman dragged before the U.N.S.C. and have them slap a guilty verdict on him.”

“I see,” Meg said unhappily, exchanging a look with Siris.

“What are you concerned about?” Fox asked, tilting her head slightly. 

And Locus felt a stabbing pain in his chest when Meg’s eyes flicked over to him for a split second, and he looked away guiltily.

“Why don’t you ask him?” Meg suggested, and out of the corner of his eye, Locus could see her nod in his direction.

“You mean that one time everyone thought he shot your husband?” Fox asked.

“Before that,” Meg said.

Behind him, Locus heard Siris let out a long sigh. “It’s water under the bridge, Meg. We talked about this.

“I don’t want you to get  _ hurt,” _ Meg hissed.

“We’re not going to be taking any unnecessary risks,” Fox said. “It’s my priority to keep my teammates  _ alive.” _

“You can trust her,” Locus said, earning him a startled look from Fox. 

Meg fell into an unhappy silence after that, and Locus listened as Siris finished washing the rest of the dishes and turned the sink off. 

“Why don’t we all sit?” Siris suggested.

Meg just sighed and led the rest of them to the living room, where they all took a seat on the pale grey corner sofa in front of the fireplace.

“So let’s talk this out,” Fox said, “because if this is going to work, I need everyone onboard one-hundred percent. So if there’s any bad blood, we need to work it out ASAP, or there’s gonna be trouble later down the line.”

Meg let out another, frustrated sigh, and looked over at her husband, then at Locus, who was beginning to wish he could just disappear. “Things between you two started getting ugly before you went your separate ways. I want to know what caused it, and what  _ both _ of you are going to do to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Fox raised an eyebrow and said nothing, but Locus had the impression that she was amused by Meg’s request.

“Y’know, honestly? I don’t even... _ know _ ...why things got like that,” Siris said, looking over at Locus.

Locus stared at the floor, thinking hard, running through his last year as a bounty hunter, trying to figure out where the tension started. “Gates...might have had something to do with it,” he said slowly.

Siris scratched his head and looked over at Meg, who said “based on what I’ve been told about how you’ve spent the past few years on that colony planet, and the apparent impact he had on you there, I can’t say I’m surprised.”

And the ugly thing in the back of Locus’ mind reared its head and said  _ you should’ve died. It would have been so much easier.  _ “I’m trying to fix it,” he said in a voice much weaker than he’d wanted.

“Look, I-- Like I said, it’s water under the bridge,” Siris said. “We have to do better, yes, but I think we’re in a position where we can actually do that.”

_ Maybe, _ Locus thought, looking over at him, and feeling guilt take the form of a ball of ice in his chest. He’d never wanted to be Meg and Siris’ enemy. 

“Felix turned you guys against one another,” Fox said slowly, sounding like she was asking for clarification.

“I guess,” Siris replied. “Sam and I got along fine before...well, that last year. Gates started wanting to go after bigger fish, take harder jobs. And when I told him that they weren’t worth it, and that the people he wanted to work for weren’t  _ good people…” _

“Gates was a coward,” Locus said, and the words tasted bitter, but he knew they were true. “He knew he couldn’t do it alone, so he turned us against each other.”

“Yeah,” Siris said.  _ “Yeah.  _ I guess so.”

Meg was silent for a moment, eyeing both of them, then said. “So are the two of you going to get along?”

“I...we’ll do our best,” Siris said.

Locus nodded in agreement.

“You two won’t have a choice,” Fox said flatly. 

“Good,” Meg said, then looked over at Locus and added, “and I better not hear about you letting my husband get stabbed again.”

“That won’t happen,” Locus sighed, feeling both his social and emotional batteries dipping into the red zone.

“Is that what got you a shotgun to the face?” Fox asked, looking over at him.

“You  _ told _ her about that?” Meg asked.

“She  _ asked,” _ Locus replied flatly.

Meg just shook her head in disbelief, then to Fox, said  _ “yes, _ that’s what caused that little incident.”

“Well, at least now I know he deserved it,” Fox replied with a grin.

Siris just sighed and looked at his watch. “I’m gonna go check on Liv,” he said to Meg. 

“Thank you,” she replied. 

“Thanks for coming over,” Siris said over his shoulder as he stood and headed for the stairs to the second floor. “It means a lot.”

“Thanks for having us,” Fox said. Then to Meg, added “if there’s nothing else you wanna ask, we can get out of your hair.”

“I think that’s it,” Meg sighed, standing. “I’ll walk you two to the door.”

Fox and Locus followed her and said their goodbyes at the front door before stepping out onto the porch. Locus had just started down the stairs after Fox when he heard Meg’s voice behind him.

“Sam?”

Locus stopped and looked back at Meg questioningly.

“You look out for my husband, understand?”

Locus nodded.

“Good,” Meg said, and shut the door.

Locus just sighed and followed Fox to her car. He couldn’t wait to get home.

 

* * *

 

“Well, that was stressful,” Fox said, stepping through the front door of the apartment after the ride back from Siris’ house. “I think I’m gonna go for a run.”

Locus just listened to her tiredly, lacking the energy to respond, and watched her kick off her shoes and pick them up. 

“You did good, though. I know shit like that is a pain for you,” Fox continued, tucking her bangs behind her ear. 

Locus didn’t say anything, and instead crossed his arms and leaned back against the kitchen counter.

“Aaaand you’re in a mood so I’m gonna stop talking to you now,” Fox said, turning and heading towards her room. “You look tired,” she said over her shoulder. “Maybe try getting some sleep? I know it’s not super late, but still. Either way, don’t keep yourself up for me.”

Locus just watched her disappear into her room and shut the door behind her, then turned his gaze to the floor, thinking about how the last few hours had gone. He let the angry voice in the back of his head bully him for a little bit before pushing it back with a sigh and heading to his room to get changed into more comfortable clothes. 

By the time he had finished and stepped back out into the living area, Fox was gone. Locus stood in his bedroom doorway for a moment, contemplating what he wanted to do, then leaned back into his room and grabbed his laptop before heading into the living room and settling on the sofa. He knew if he tried to sleep now, he’d wind up staring at the ceiling fan, going over the events of the evening on repeat in his mind. It wasn’t that late anyways. 

He figured he’d just kill time catching up on a few Earth shows until Fox got back. And for the next hour and a half, that’s what he did, only pausing the streaming service when he heard the sound of footsteps outside of the apartment door.

He glanced up when he heard Fox unlocking the door, frowning when it opened and she only stuck her head through instead of stepping inside.

“Oh good, you’re right there,” she said, eyes brightening when she saw him. “Could you, uh, help me with something really fast?”

Locus stood and made his way over to her carefully, uncertain as to whether or not he wanted to get involved in whatever was causing Fox’s strange behavior. “What’s--” he didn’t have time to get the full sentence out before Fox opened the door wide enough for him to step through, revealing a dog standing in the lobby outside. 

It looked like some sort of mutt; covered in dirt and missing an eye. But the one it had left was bright and intelligent, and when it fell on Locus, the dog’s tail began to wag. 

“Surprise,” Fox said, an awkward half-smile on her face.

Locus closed his eyes and sighed, then looked over at Fox and said “no.”

“What? It’s--”

“We are not getting a  _ dog.” _

“You’re right!  _ We _ aren’t!” Fox declared.  _ “I _ am.”

_ “Fox,” _ Locus said, knowing full well that she was beyond reason, but still wanting to try. “We have enough responsibilities as it  _ is.” _

“Oh my god, Milo’s not a  _ parrot. _ I’m not gonna have to take him out and do intense enrichment exercises or whatever,” Fox said. 

“Milo?” Locus asked flatly.

“That’s his  _ name.” _

“You  _ named _ him?”

“Well  _ yeah! _ I’m not just gonna call him ‘dog!”

“Why-- How did you even--  _ Where _ did you find him?” 

“In the park. I couldn’t find his owner, and he looked kinda beat up, so I brought him here. I figure we can give him some food and take him to the vet tomorrow and see if he has a chip or something,” Fox replied.

Locus stared at her. “So you don’t plan on keeping him? Good.”

“Hey, I never said  _ that,” _ Fox replied, looking annoyed. “I mean, _ look _ at him. Whoever his owners were, if he had any, they weren’t exactly treating him like royalty. And he’s  _ definitely _ some sort of pitbull. He’s not gonna get adopted if we just send him to a kennel, especially looking the way he is.”

Locus just frowned and looked back over at the dog, who had sat down and was staring at him expectantly like he was waiting for an answer. “Where are you going to keep him?”

“I was gonna leave him out here with a few towels and a bowl of water,” Fox replied.

“He needs food.”

“The nearest store will be closed by the time I get there. I was just gonna cut up some sausage links I have in the fridge,” Fox said. “And then I was gonna try to give him a bath.”

Locus didn’t say anything, and stepped back to allow Fox through to get to the kitchen. He looked back at her, watching as she opened the fridge, then turned back to the dog. With a sigh, he stepped out into the lobby and stared down at the dog for a moment with his arms crossed. Milo looked back at him with his single eye and opened his mouth and started to pant. He was stressed, Locus realized. Here he was in a new place with new people who he wasn’t sure he could trust after being hurt and alone for a presumably long time. 

The parallel between their circumstances was enough to make Locus feel a little guilty about wanting to turn the dog away. With another sigh, he uncrossed his arms and slowly lowered himself into a crouch, putting himself on the dog’s level. 

Milo’s ears pricked and he tilted his head to the side, shutting his mouth. Then he leaned forward slightly and sniffed in Locus’ direction, gradually raising himself up onto all fours and slowly made his way towards him. 

Locus let him, doing his best to keep still so as not to startle the dog as it approached. When Milo reached him, he held out a hand for the dog to sniff, without really thinking about it, and resisted the urge to pull back when Milo started licking at his palm. Instead, he slowly reached out and cautiously pet the dog on the head, silently praying he wouldn’t snap at him. But when Milo simply started wagging his tail, Locus quickly gained the confidence to keep petting him. 

“Aw, and you said you didn’t wanna keep him!”

Locus froze, looking back towards the kitchen where Fox was grinning at him as she put the now-diced up sausages into a tupperware next to one that was full of water. He watched as she picked them both up and carried them over, looking on as Milo pulled away at the smell of food and followed her to where she placed both tupperwares against the wall under the window. Milo immediately shoved his face into the one full of food and began eating, tail wagging all the while. 

Fox stepped back with her hands on her hips and looked over her shoulder at Locus with a half-smile on her face. “Admit it, you like him.”

Locus just rolled his eyes and stood, wiping his hands off on his pants. “How do you plan on cleaning him off?”

“I was gonna just put him in my bathtub,” Fox replied.

“That’s going to make a mess.”

“Maybe you could help me then?” Fox asked.

_ I knew that was coming, _ Locus thought. “Fine.”

_ “Grump,” _ Fox chuckled, crossing her arms and looking on as Milo turned his attention to the bowl of water. “So what is it? Do you not like dogs, or…”

“That’s not the reason why I don’t think we should keep it,” Locus replied.

“But  _ do _ you like dogs?”

“Only when it’s reasonable to have one.”

“That was a yes or no answer, my dude.”

Locus looked over at her. “Why do you want to keep him?”

Fox shrugged. “He needs help. He doesn’t have anybody else. I know what that feels like.”

Locus, not knowing what to say to that, looked away, eyes falling on Milo as he trotted over to them. 

“Was that good?” Fox asked in the sort of voice a person might use to talk to a baby, leaning down with her hands on her knees. “Are you all full now? Are you ready for a bath?”

Milo barked in reply, his tail wagging hard enough to shake his entire body. 

“He’s going to get mud everywhere,” Locus remarked, looking at his paws.

“So I’ll carry him!” Fox replied. 

_ “You’re _ going to carry  _ him?” _ Locus asked, looking over at Milo pointedly.

“He’s not heavy.”

“You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“Just--Let me do it,” Locus said, not at all interested in having to explain to Kimball that Fox threw out her back trying to pick up a stray dog. He crouched down and let Milo come to him.  _ Please don’t bite me, _ he thought as he scooped Milo into his arms, immediately receiving a giant sloppy kiss on the face from the dog. 

“I think he likes you,” Fox grinned, slipping past and stepping back into her apartment.

Locus fixed her in a glare and followed her to her bathroom, depositing Milo in the tub when he got there. 

“Okay, towels, baby shampoo-- that’s safe for dogs right? Uh...conditioner?” Fox listed off as she pulled supplies out from under her sink and set them on the floor. Once she had everything, she picked it all up and carried it over to the tup, setting it down on the ground. “So, uh, you know about dogs, where do we start?” she asked, looking over at Locus.

“You’ve never given a dog a bath?” Locus asked flatly, wiping off his cheek with his sleeve.

Fox looked sheepish, “uh...well, back when I had one, I always just brought her to the groomer? So, like, no.”

Locus stared at her in disbelief for a moment, then shook it off and turned on the water, holding his hand under the faucet to check the temperature. When it was just right, he changed the setting to shower. “Hand me the shampoo,” he said, keeping an eye on Milo to make sure the dog wasn’t too stressed out. Thankfully he seemed fine.

“Here you go,” Fox said, handing the bottle over to him.

He took it from her and popped the cap before squirting some of the shampoo onto Milo’s back. “Work it in,” he told Fox, and started scrubbing Milo’s shoulders. 

“Do you think we could give him a full-body mohawk?” Fox asked, scrubbing Milo’s back and hips. 

“Maybe,” Locus said, watching Milo lick at the water dripping off of his nose. 

“I don’t even wanna know what you walked through, buddy,” Fox commented, squirting some shampoo into her hand and beginning to work it into one of his hind legs. 

_ “Boof,” _ Milo replied, and wagged his tail a little.

Locus just shook his head a little, slightly amused by the interaction, and kept going.

The two of them worked on Milo until they had finally washed all of the dirt and grime from his fur. Trying to put conditioner on him became difficult when he decided he was tired of sitting still, and both Fox and Locus eventually gave up halfway through. 

After double-checking to make sure that Milo was completely clean, Locus turned off the water, watching Fox unfold the towel she had grabbed. Milo stood, and Locus realized far too late that he was in the direct line of fire, and quickly turned and put his hands up in an attempt to shield himself from the spray as the dog shook himself. To his left, Fox let out a burst of laughter, and he looked over to see her doubled up with a hand over her mouth that barely hid the smile on her face.

 

 

_ At least one of us is having fun, _ Locus thought, but relaxed a little, turning back to Milo, whose fur was stuck out in spikes all over him. “Let me see that,” he said, nodding at the towel in Fox’s hands.

She held it out to him and he took it, standing up and leaning over Milo as he did his best to dry the dog off. Then he set the towel on the edge of the tub and picked the dog up out of the tub, setting him down on the ground. Milo shook again, then spun around and faced him with his mouth open and tongue out, claws tapping against the tiled floor.

“Well,” Fox began, standing and holding her arms out as she looked down in her now-soaked and muddy workout clothes, “he got  _ his _ bath. I think it’s our turn now.” She looked up at Locus with a crooked half-smile, then let her arms drop and walked past, leading Milo out of her room, cooing at him the whole time. 

Locus picked up the dirty towel and followed her, pulling open the closet doors to the washroom in the hallway and tossing it into the washing machine before stepping into the kitchen. The front door to the apartment was wide open, and he could see Fox standing in the lobby with her hands on her hips and a look like she was thinking hard on her face. “What’s wrong?” Locus asked, walking over and leaning against the door frame, crossing his arms.

“I’m trying to think about what we should do for a bed for him,”  Fox replied. “I’d let him sleep inside, but...I don’t want him peeing everywhere.”

“He lived on the streets up until an hour ago. He’ll be fine sleeping out here on the ground for a night,” Locus replied.

“Mmm,” Fox said. “Maybe I’ll grab him some old towels to sleep on so he has cushioning.” She turned and brushed past and headed back towards her room.

Locus watched her go, then looked back at the dog.

Milo blinked, then sat and scratched his ear before rolling over onto his back, squirming around to rub an itch on his back. He then rolled back over and sat up and trotted over to Locus, tail wagging. 

Locus reached down and pet his head, looking back over his shoulder when he heard Fox approaching from behind. 

“Alright, here are some towels, that way I don’t feel  _ guilty _ about leaving you out here,” Fox said to Milo, squeezing past Locus and setting the towels down near the makeshift water bowl by the wall. 

Milo walked over to investigate, nose low to the ground. He pawed at the towels, glancing over at Fox, then stepped onto them and settled down, tucking his legs under his body. 

“Okay, good. He likes them,” Fox breathed. “Our work is done here. I’m gonna go grab a shower.” With that, she turned and stepped back into her apartment, walking back to her room and shutting the door behind her.

Locus looked back at Milo, noting that the dog seemed comfortable, then stepped back into the apartment and shut the door behind him.

Several hours later, after a shower and much tossing and turning in bed, Locus finally dragged himself into the living room, hoping that a change of scenery and a digital book might help tire him out. He settled down on the couch, swiping through a few of the books he had stored on his phone, looking up suddenly when he heard a high-pitched noise coming from outside. Frowning, he stopped and listened for a moment, then went back to what he had been doing before, picking out a book and starting on the first chapter. He made it a few paragraphs in before he heard the noise again. This time, it was clearer, and Locus realised it was the sound of a dog whining. He looked towards the door to the apartment, eyes narrowed, then set his phone down on the coffee table and wandered over to it. He leaned against the door frame for a moment, listening, and when he heard the noise again, right outside, he opened the door. 

Milo was sitting right in front of the door, front paws tapping anxiously on the ground, tail wagging when he saw Locus. He let out another whine and turned towards the elevator doors, then back to Locus.

“What do you--” Locus cut off, feeling stupid. Fox had given Milo a tupperware full of water, and a bath. The dog was undoubtedly  _ very _ hydrated. “Alright, hold on,” Locus sighed, and shut the door, walking back to his room and pulling on a pair of shoes before heading back outside, grabbing Fox’s keys off the hook before leading Milo over to the elevator and calling it. With a dull chime, the doors opened, and he and Milo stepped in. Locus figured out which button to press to take them to the roof, and then they were off. The minute the doors opened again, Milo bolted out, then stopped and looked back at Locus, tail wagging. 

Locus followed him out, a little caught off-guard at his surroundings. The entire roof was essentially a garden, with trees and bushes and plants all around the edges off it, with a strip of concrete running through the middle. A whine from Milo caught his attention, and he looked back at the dog and said “go on.”

Milo’s ears perked up, and he darted into the bushes.

Locus took the chance to get a look at the garden, walking down the strip of concrete, wondering how in the world he hadn’t noticed the vegetation from the street. As he looked around, he noticed that a lot of other apartments seemed to have the same situation going on their roofs as well. It was odd. He’d never seen anything quite like it before. And he hadn’t realized how much the city had changed since he’d left it. 

The sound of claws tapping against concrete drew his attention, and he looked over to see Milo trotting towards him, tongue lolling out of his mouth. 

_ Someone clearly trained you, _ Locus thought as the dog stopped short of him and sat down like he was awaiting instruction. “Come on,” he said, starting towards the elevator to head back to Fox’s apartment. Milo stood and hurried after him, keeping pace with him the whole way there.

When they got back, Locus went to head back inside the apartment, but something stopped him when he got to the door. He turned and looked back at Milo, who was sitting by the towels Fox had left as his bedding. After a moment, he let out a long sigh and quietly said “alright, let’s go.”

Milo raised his ears, then stood and hurried after him, stepping into the apartment, and standing by Locus’ side as he closed the door behind him.

Locus thought for a moment, trying to figure out what the next step was. Then he leaned down and picked the dog up, tucking him under his arm like an oversized furry football, then walked over and grabbed his phone before heading to his room. It was a pain, but he didn’t want to risk waking Fox up--not that he thought she’d mind at all, considering she wanted to keep Milo anyways--by letting the dog’s feet tap up against the hardwood floors. When he got to his room, he set the dog down and closed the door behind him. A sound drew his attention, and he looked over to see Milo laying on his bed. 

“Really?”

_ “Boof,” _ Milo said softly, and wagged his tail. 

_I’m getting talked back to by a_ ** _dog,_** Locus realized, rolling his eyes. He walked over and plugged in his phone before hopping into bed. Almost immediately, Milo was at his side, curled up next to him and letting out a big, long sigh.

_ Sure. Make yourself comfortable, _ Locus thought, shaking his head and closing his eyes. But he realized that, for the first time in a long time, the feeling of paranoia that often haunted him late at night wasn’t nearly as bad as it usually was. And his mind drifted back to the two chihuahua’s he’d had as a child before the war, and how safe they’d made him feel. And he decided that maybe keeping Milo wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

 

* * *

 

“Well hello, hello, Ms. Snow,” Marlowe chimed, holding up his datapad so the mercenary could see his face clearly. “How did your report to the chairman go?”

“I couldn’t reach him.”

“Ah, that’s right. I think he’s in a meeting right now. Did you leave a message?” Marlowe asked.

“What do you think?”

“Touchy,” Marlowe tisked, adjusting his glasses. “Mind filling me in? It’ll get us both on Hargrove’s good side if neither of us make him listen to a video message.”

Snow sighed. “Kiss-up,” she muttered. “I’ve started working to establish contacts here in the city. I’ve managed to get a few local gangs on board. One guy you’ve probably already heard about, Gabriel Abbott, currently has most of the underground of Boston under his thumb, and already has a weapons sale deal through Charon. I’ve already talked to him and he’s agreed to help me establish contacts throughout the northern United States, and possibly on an international scale, considering he has ties to black market weapon trade and trafficking. He’s currently away on business, but he’s agreed to speak with Hargrove in detail about helping us sniff out the soldiers Chorus sent to Earth once he gets back.”

“Oh,  _ excellent!  _ I’ll make sure Hargrove hears that. Be ready for him to call you once he gets out of his meeting.” Marlowe chimed with a smile. He set the datapad back down on his desk and propped it up against his travel mug so Snow could still see him, then sat down in his chair. “Now I know you didn’t call me to have me forward information to your boss,” he said, lacing his fingers together on his desk.

“I wanted to see how--”

“Patient Zero is doing. Yes, yes,” Marlowe said, waving a hand dismissively. 

“He has a  _ name.” _

“I’m aware, but it hardly  _ matters. _ Don’t forget he’s here for a reason.”

“To be your guinea pig, you mean?” Snow asked, a hint of disgust in her voice.

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, it sounds like you’re finally starting to pick up some of the debt he owes us,” Marlowe replied, cupping the side of his face with a hand and propping his elbow against the top of his desk, eyes never leaving Snow.

“Look, whatever. Just, how is he?” Snow asked.

“Fine, we’re looking to run some tests to see how he fares with the new cybernetics installed, alongside some other prototype patients,” Marlowe replied, shifting some papers on his desk with his free hand. 

“I want to know how that goes.”

“Very well. I’ll get in touch with you once we have our results.”

“What, just like that?”

Marlowe looked back over at her. “Well of course! It’s such a good way to keep you motivated towards our goal, after all.”

Snow let out a huff. “Right. Well, I have work to do.”

“I’ll let you go, then,” Marlowe replied with an amused smile. “We’ll speak soon.”

Snow gave him a nod, then the transmission cut, and the feed went black. Marlowe exited out of the video call window, taking the datapad back into his hands, noting the time in the top right corner of the screen. With a sigh, he stood, tucking the datapad under his arm and pushing his chair in before heading for the exit to his lab. He made his way through the halls of  _ The Staff of Charon  _ towards the armory, where Reed and three of his other scientists were waiting for him along with two soldiers. Reed turned and gave him a nod when he joined her at her side, looking up at the circular rig and the man hooked up to it having his power armor equipped. 

“How are we feeling?” Marlowe called up to him.

“Fuck off.”

“You’re not still angry about that surgery, are you?” Marlowe asked as the rig snapped the last piece of his patient’s power armor on. 

He fixed Marlowe in a glare, then stepped out of the rig and took his helmet out of the hands of one of the scientists, shoving it on. “Just give me the damn briefing,” he growled.

Marlowe sighed, then looked down at the datapad in his hand and said “your mission is to infiltrate Chorus, undetected. Once you arrive, you’ll recon the designated area of operation for any useful resources or possible threats. Once you send a report back, we’ll instruct you on how to engage with the locals.”

“So basically, I’m finishing what we started?” the patient snorted. “You couldn’t get someone else to do it?”

“You started it, you finish it,” Marlowe replied flatly. 

“Technically  _ you _ started it, and then hired us.” 

_ “Semantics,” _ Marlowe said exasperatedly. “Listen, just do as you’re told, and try to be at least  _ semi- _ competent this time. We were merciful this time around, but next ti--” He didn’t have a chance to finish before his patient stepped forward, grabbed him by the front of his shirt, and yanked him in close enough that Marlowe could feel the tip of his nose brush against the cold metal of his helmet. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Reed take a startled step back and the two soldiers raise their weapons. He held up a hand to stop them.

_ “Merciful, _ doctor? You call this  _ mercy? _ The  _ only _ reason I haven’t ripped your fucking lungs out and fed them to you for what you did to me is that this little ‘upgrade’ you’ve given me will make killing that son of a bitch Locus that much easier,” the patient snarled. “But once I’m done with him and the Reds and Blues, I’m going to make you suffer through  _ every _ bit of pain you put me through. And I’m gonna sleep like a fucking  _ baby _ after, understand?”

Marlowe swallowed hard and nodded.

“Good,” the patient growled, and gave him a hard shove backwards. “Now give me some guns and put me on a ship. Chorus isn’t going to kill itself.”

 

* * *

 

“So.”

_ “So.” _

“Uh...th-thanks for joining me,” Simmons said, not looking at Grif and instead staring out over the canopy. 

“Yeah,” Grif replied, eyes also on the jungle below. The sun was setting behind the mountains in the distance, casting an orange glow over everything, and turning the clouds a brilliant pink. It was gorgeous, Grif thought. He allowed himself a moment to take it all in before looking over at Simmons. “So,” he began, “what did you have planned?”

“Oh, uh, planned?” Simmons asked, looking over at him sharply.

“You  _ do _ have something for us to do, right? Other than just stand here. ‘Cause otherwise this is just patrol,” Grif said.

“W-well, I-I thought we could...just...y’know, talk?” Simmons replied.

Grif stared at him a moment, trying to figure out why the hell Simmons was acting so weird, then said “cool,” and sat down cross-legged on the ground.

Simmons joined him, tucking his legs under him and looking out over the jungle.

“So what do you want to talk about?” Grif asked.

“Um...I don’t really…know...” Simmons said, hunching his shoulders a little.

Grif frowned under his helmet, then sighed and said “so how have you been doing recently?”

“Fine, I guess,” Simmons replied, staring at the ground. “What about you?”

“Bored,” Grif said, then thought about it and added, “and worried about Kai.”

Simmons looked over at him, but didn’t say anything.

“Y’know, lately, I’ve been having this thought where when I go looking for her, I’m gonna find out she’s dead or something,” Grif admitted.

“She’s tough. She’ll be fine,” Simmons said quietly.

Grif didn’t say anything for a while, and instead watched the sun sink lower in the sky. “Yeah, she is. I know she’s alive. I think...I think I’d feel it if she wasn’t y’know?”

“Yeah,” Simmons said, nodding.

“If she were here now, she’d probably be laughing at us,” Grif continued, a small smile forming on his face under his helmet.

“Why?”

Grif laughed and rubbed the back of his neck. “We’re sitting on a cliff watching a sunset. Why do you  _ think?” _

Simmons made a sound like an eagle with a sinus infection and looked away. 

Grif let the silence linger for a bit before speaking up again. “So how long were you standing outside of the motor pool earlier today?”

“Wh-- H-how did you--!?” Simmons spluttered, looking back at him sharply.

“You cast a shadow,” Grif replied, a little smugly. “I knew it was you because I could see you fidgeting.”

Simmons buried his face in his hands, groaning. “I wasn’t sure what to  _ say!” _ he replied, then looked over at Grif and asked “but if you knew I was there, why’d you run into me?”

“I didn’t think you were gonna move, dumbass.”

“Oh.”

Grif chuckled and fell silent for a bit, then asked “how’s your nose, by the way?”

“Bruised.”

“I’m _ not _ kissing it better.”

“Good. I don’t want you to.”

“I wouldn’t need to, anyways,” Grif mused with a dismissive wave of his hand. “It’ll be fine in a few days.”

Simmons laughed. “Yeah, and besides, some people like a rugged look.”

Grif was startled into a laugh, but felt his cheeks flush. “Er, yeah, sure, Simmons.”

_ “What? _ Doc thinks Donut is cute, and  _ he _ got half his face blown off!”

“Ehhh, yeah. But they’re good for each other. I think Doc would like him either way,” Grif replied.

Simmons shrugged. 

“So what were you talking to Donut about? You mentioned he thought that we should spend more time together? As friends?” Grif asked.

“Oh, uh…” Simmons looked over at him, and hunched his shoulders almost guiltily, and Grif suddenly wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer. 

“Simmons?” Grif asked.

“Well he  _ did _ offer to set us up,” Simmons said slowly. “But I think it was a joke.”

“You think-- Simmons, Donut isn’t  _ smart _ enough to tell jokes!” Grif exclaimed.

“Yeah he is! S-sometimes,” Simmons said, looking away.

Grif inclined his head back slightly, staring up at the sky above him, the clockwork in his mind ticking. “Can you be honest with me for a sec?”

“I-I’ve  _ been _ honest!”

“Honest- _ er.” _

“Uh...s-sure…”

“Is...is this a date?” Grif asked, and he the minute he did so, he wished he hadn’t. Because truth was, he didn’t know if he was ready for Simmons to say yes, if he did. Where would he even go from there? What would he even do? And why the hell would Simmons pick  _ him _ of all people? Especially when there were plenty of others who were way, way better. Who weren’t walking disasters. Who weren’t useless pieces of shit--

“Do you want it to be?”

Grif swallowed hard and bit own on his lip, squeezing his eyes shut under his helmet. _I don’t know,_ he thought. _I don’t fucking know._ _I don’t wanna get in too deep. I don’t wanna get_ ** _hurt._** _There’s no_ ** _way_** _you could ever care about me like that._ And a stabbing pain, like someone was jamming a knife under his sternum, settled in his chest as he realized he _did_ want it to be a date. _I’m just not fucking ready for you to realize you could do better than this,_ Grif thought bitterly, then sucked in a breath and said “nah.”

“O-oh. Okay,” Simmons said.

Grif forced himself to look over at him, shocked at the disappointment in his voice. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, just...Nothing. I’m fine,” Simmons said. 

And the ache in Grif’s chest got worse, and he stared at the ground and said “look, I’m...really happy I met you, okay? It’s...It’s just…” He looked over towards where the sun had sunk halfway behind the mountains. “There’s too much going on, okay? And I-- You’re a--  _ fuck,  _ how do I say this? Uh...you’re a nice...guy? And I know your options are limited right now, and I get it, but like...maybe wait a little bit?”

“Wh-- Do you think that you’re not...Grif do you think you’re not  _ good _ enough?” Simmons asked incredulously.

Grif chewed on his bottom lip, staring at the ground, wishing he could sink right into it. “It’s not-- I just think there are other people you haven’t considered who could align with…everything you want...a little better.”

And Simmons let out a huff and looked away. “You could have just said no,” he muttered bitterly.

And Grif  _ hated _ how he sounded, and without thinking, said “I’m not  _ saying _ no.”

“Then what  _ are _ you saying?” Simmons asked, looking over at him. 

“I’m saying…” Grif took a deep breath and continued, “I’m saying you could do better. And should. That’s it.”

Simmons stared at him, then let out a frustrated sigh. “I knew this was a bad idea,” he muttered, turning his head away.

“Simmons…” Grif started to reach for him, then faltered and took his hand back. “Look I--I’m glad we came out here. I’m glad we had this talk. I think...it cleared some stuff up.”

Simmons looked over at him, but didn’t say anything.

“And...honestly? This was a nice break. I mean, I’m usually taking a nap by now, but  _ this, _ this was nice. I-I mean it  _ wasn’t… _ but...I...I like talking with you,” Grif stammered out.

“Really?” Simmons asked.

“Yeah. You’re my friend,” Grif said with a nod. “Maybe...maybe we could do this again? But not have so much tension next time. And...maybe bring a few snacks.”

“I...could maybe ask Donut for a bottle of wine next time,” Simmons suggested.

“Sure, just don’t bring any candles. It’ll make it weird,” Grif replied.

“I don’t even know where I’d  _ find _ candles!” Simmons exclaimed.

“Me neither,” Grif laughed, relieved that the tension had started to go down. And when he looked over, he noticed how far the sun had sunk, and said “hey maybe we should head back now so we’re not tripping over bushes and shit on the way down?”

“Yeah, that’s probably smart,” Simmons agreed with a nod.

Grif rose to his feet and offered Simmons his hand, pulling him upright when he took it. “Come on. Let’s go see what’s for dinner, yeah?”

“Ugh, I’m starving,” Simmons moaned, starting down the trail.

“Well, you’d better walk fast, then, ‘cause I’m eating  _ everything _ when I get there,” Grif said, power-walking past him.

“Wh--  _ Hey! _ Get back here!” Simmons exclaimed after him.

Grif just laughed, and slowed down enough for Simmons to catch up, and together they walked down the trail back to headquarters.

Neither of them noticed the dropship that sank beneath the clouds behind them towards the jungle below.

 

* * *

 

“Hey, you wanna see something weird?”

Louise rolled his eyes and looked over at Mel, who had his gun pointed at a large purple flower blooming from a vine creeping up one of the surrounding trees. “Please don’t shoot that,” he moaned. “My ears are still bleeding from Hodges’ singing earlier.”

“Fuck you, I sound like an angel,” Hodges said from behind him.

“Yeah, a  _ dying _ angel,” Louise shot back.

“Nah, nah, nah. I’m not gonna shoot it. Look,” Mel said, and poked the muzzle of his gun into the flower. Immediately, it’s petals wrapped around it in response.

“Oh cool, it’s one of those bug-eater flower things,” Hodges said.

“Like a Venus fly trap?” Louise asked.

“Yeah but like, prettier,” Hodges replied.

Mel tugged his gun loose and holstered it on his back. “These things are weird, man. I want a whole bunch of them in my garden when this war is over.”

“They’re a  _ vine. _ You gonna have a garden full of trees?” Louise asked.

“Uh, if I  _ want _ to, yeah,” Mel replied. “I’ll be a war hero. No one will wanna fuck with me  _ or _ my yard. I’ll be able to do whatever I want.”

“Sure, sure, until the homeowners association kicks you out,” Hodges snickered.

“Man,  _ fuck _ the homeowners association. I’ll just ask General Kimball to sign a document saying I can do whatever the fuck I want.  _ Then _ we’ll see what they have to say,” Mel scoffed.

“Y’know, I don’t think that’s how that works,” Louise intoned.

“What do you know? You’ve never even  _ owned _ a house,” Mel replied.

“No, but I’m smart enough to know that General Kimball will probably have more important things to do than settle a lawn dispute,” Louise said.

“Not if I’m a war hero,” Mel snorted. “You just wait and see. After this patrol, I’m gonna go right to her office and ask--” He cut off suddenly and looked around, reaching for the rifle on his back. “Did you guys just hear that?”

Louise tensed, his grip on his own weapon tightening as he drew in closer to the others. “What? I didn’t hear anything,” he whispered.

“Listen,” Hodges hissed.

And the three of them did, the sounds of the jungle shifting in the light wind around them filling the air. 

After a moment, Mel relaxed a little and lowered his gun, and the others did the same. He breathed out a sigh, and looked over at Louise. “Whatever it was, it’s gone now. Might have just been a bir--” He never had time to finish his sentence before a bolt of white-hot light burst out of the jungle and shot clean through his chest. 

“Fuck! Contact!” Louise shouted, and both he and Hodges scrambled off the trail, taking cover behind a pair of trees.

“Oh shit. Oh  _ shit. _ What the fuck was that?!” Hodges gasped.

“Fuck. I-I don’t know. I didn’t see it,” Louise hissed back.

“Oh fuck. Th-they got Mel.”

“I know. I know.  _ Shit,” _ Louise said, shaking his head at the ground, hands tight around his gun. “L-look, contact headquarters. They need to know about this--”

“Goddamnit, Striker. You only hit one of them!” a new voice complained from near where Mel’s body had fallen.

Louise peeked out behind cover, trying to find the source, and his eyes fell on a pair of what  _ looked _ like soldiers. 

“Hey, it’s not my fault I don’t know how to use this shit. Marlowe didn’t exactly give us time to test run any of it,” the taller of the two replied.

“It doesn’t matter,” said a third soldier as he emerged from the brush. “Comm signals are being jammed for a five mile radius The two that ran off have no way to call for help. We’ll practice on them, then bury the bodies and move on.”

Louise swallowed hard and drew back behind cover, his hands shaking.

“Did they say comms are down?” Hodges asked.

Louise just nodded. “Five mile radius. We need to move.”

“We’re gonna try to outrun them?”

“Do you have a better plan? We saw what they just did to Mel!” Louise exclaimed quietly.

Hodges shook his head.

Louise took a deep breath. “Okay, we move on three. One...Two…”

_ “Three,” _ a new voice purred from between him and Hodges.

Out of reflex, the two men whirled, guns raised, towards the source of the voice. Neither of them got a shot off before both of them were knocked backwards.

Stunned, Louise looked over to see the shortest of the three soldiers standing in front of them with both arms outstretched towards them. But what caught his attention were the glowing diamonds cut into the palms of his hands. And then the enchantment was broken as the soldier dropped his hands to his sides and took a step forward, and Louise turned and reached for his gun. 

“Ah, ah,  _ ah!  _ I don’t think so,” came the voice of the third soldier as he dropped out of the trees and landed with one foot pinning both Louise’s hand and his weapon down. He looked over at the shorter of the three, who had by now been joined by his companion, and said “you two get information out of that one. I want to  _ play _ with this one a bit.”

“Aye, boss,” said the short one, and he and the tall soldier started towards Hodges.

“Hey,  _ hey! _ Leave him alone!” Louise shouted in a panic, watching helplessly as Hodges tried to scramble away from the two. 

“I’d worry more about myself if  _ I _ were you,” the leader growled, grinding his heel into Louise’s hand. 

Louise gasped, and tried to pull his hand free, and when he failed, he pulled his combat knife out of his sheath and stabbed through his attacker’s ankle.

The leader hissed and stumbled back, taking the knife with him, and freeing Louise, who grabbed his gun and turned and fired at the soldiers who were looming over Hodges. They scattered, and Louise shouted “run!” before scrambling to his feet. 

“No  _ shit!” _ Hodges gasped, and hurried after him.

The two darted through the trees towards the trail that would take them back to headquarters. But just as it came to view, there was a flash of light, and Louise was thrown forcefully against a tree, feeling something snap upon impact, and laying prone, fiery pain shooting through his shoulder when he hit the ground. 

“Jesus, these guys are persistent,” came the voice of the short one from above.

Louise looked up, panting in pain, to see the short soldier looming over him. “What...do you  _ assholes _ want?” he gritted out.

“Truthfully?” Louise looked over as the leader approached casually from behind with the tall soldier at his flank. “Well frankly, we’re not from  _ around _ here, so I was  _ hoping _ you could provide us some insight as to where the major military outposts are on this planet. Because I know our good friend, General Kimball, has probably moved them around since the  _ last _ time we were here,” the leader explained, nodding at the tall soldier, who split off and headed into the brush. 

Louise struggled upright, a hand pressed to his wounded shoulder, and looked over in horror when he heard Hodges screaming, and watched with dismay as the tall soldier dragged him out from cover and threw him to the ground at his leader’s feet. Hodges tried to crawl away, but the leader delivered a hard kick to his side, laying him out before walking over and grabbing him by the throat in a chokehold and--to Louise’s horror--lifting him up off the ground.

“That, and, well...” the leader continued, and held his free hand out, his arm shifting and twisting unnaturally, splitting apart into five metallic tendrils sharpened into blades at their tips with red light running through them, “...I want to see what we can  _ do.”  _ And the tendrils shot forward and buried themselves into Hodge’s flesh, and he screamed and writhed and  _ begged _ for mercy as, one-by-one, each of the blades punctured clean through him, impaling him completely. Hodges let out one last guttural scream, then went limp in the leader’s grasp.

Louise watched in horror, bile climbing up his throat that he forced himself to choke down as he slowly rose to his feet, trying not to draw too much attention. 

But he wasn’t cautious enough. The short soldier noticed, and jerked his head in Louise’s direction, asking “hey boss, you want this one too?”

The leader looked over at Louise, who had by now frozen like a deer in the headlights, and pulled the tendrils free, dropping Hodges into a heap before he started towards his next victim. “Sure. Why not?” he chuckled, the tendrils that used to be his arm twisting at his side. 

Louise stumbled backwards, his blood rushing in his ears, grabbing his pistol from its holster at his hip, aiming, and pulling the trigger. The bullet hit the leader in his shoulder, and he faltered for a second, but then lunged at Louise, one of the tendrils stabbing through the pistol and whipping it out of his hands before slashing him across the stomach.

“Talk,” the leader snarled, still advancing on Louise as he doubled over in pain. “Where are the other outposts?”

Louise squeezed his eyes shut and shoot his head.

“He’s playing difficult,” said the tall soldier, who had come to stand a few feet away with his shorter counterpart to watch.

“Shame on him,” the leader chuckled. “The longer this takes, the more it’ll hurt.” One of his tendrils sliced through Louise’s bracer like it was paper, exposing the kevlar beneath. 

Louise took another step back, mind racing.

“Y’know boss, there’s plenty of soldiers to go around. And Control didn’t say we  _ had _ to have a complete map on day one,” the shorter soldier spoke up. 

Louise made the mistake of glancing over at him, and didn’t have time to prepare for the leader’s tendrils shooting through his thigh. With a yell, he stumbled backwards, his shoulder hitting the rocky wall of the cliffside that the trail ran against. He jerked back with a startled yelp when the sharpened tip of one of the leader’s metal tendrils buried itself into the stone mere inches from his face. Trembling, Louise slowly turned his head to look at the other man, who loomed over him with Hodges’ blood still wet on his helmet. 

“What- wh-who are you people?” Louise gasped, his voice shaking.

The leader chuckled, shook his head, and looked back at the two men behind him. “Why do they always ask the same questions?”

“If I’m bein’ honest, boss, I’ve never heard that one before,” the shorter of the two replied. “They usually only ask  _ why.” _

The leader hummed in agreement and looked back at Louise, who was in the process of trying to make himself as small as possible, and said “well, I suppose it’s rude not to introduce ourselves. Those two...” he jerked the thumb of his free hand back over his shoulder at his men “the short one is Relay, and the taller one is Striker.”

Louise, at this point, was shaking too badly to speak, and simply bit his lip under his helmet until he tasted blood, his breathing short and panicked. 

“As for myself,” the leader continued, yanking the tendril out of the stone and holding the tip in front of his face as though he were examining it, “most people call me Sampson.” He looked back at Louise, a cruel smile in his voice as he said “but  _ today, _ I’m gonna be known as the guy who infiltrated Chorus without any witnesses.”

Louise didn’t have time to react before Sampson shot all five of his metal tendrils directly through his throat.

Sampson jerked the tendrils free of Louise’s body, watching it slide down the wall of the cliffside, a piece of his kevlar suit that had been spared from the attack the only thing keeping his head attached to his body. 

“Honestly, for a planet that’s trying so hard to keep itself protected from the chairman, they haven’t trained their soldiers very well,” Striker remarked. 

Sampson retracted the tendrils, watching as the metal plates that they were made up of shifted and wove back together into the shape of an arm. “Don’t underestimate them,” he said, turning back to his men. “They’ve proven to be resourceful in the past. That kind of thinking will get you killed.” He looked back at Louise’s body, thinking for a moment, then said “there’s a waterfall not far from here. We can gather the bodies and dispose of them there. Let’s move.” Then he turned on his heel and strode past his men back towards the trail.

Behind him, Relay turned to Striker and sighed “by ‘we,’ he means  _ us, _ doesn’t he?”

Striker just shook his head and walked over to Hodges’ corpse, hefting it onto his shoulder and starting after Sampson. “Just do as you’re told. The last thing I want is to get on his bad side.”

“Fair enough,” Relay said, and slung Louise’s corpse over his shoulder before hurrying to catch up to his teammates.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YA’LL THOUGHT THAT FUCKER LOCUS IMPALED WAS DEAD HUH? SIKE!  
> I accidentally got too attached to him and now he’s a major character. Oh well. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
> Ok how many of you thought it was Felix? Be honest.
> 
> Poor Louise. He was a beloved yet unimportant side character that we only knew for like 5 seconds in two whole chapters. He will be missed.
> 
> *KICKS THE DOOR IN* I HEARD YA’LL WANTED LOCUS TO GET A CUTE ASS PUPPY SO HERE YOU FUCKERS GO.  
> He’s such a good boy I love him so much.   
> This is p much the only 100% self-indulgent part of the fic okay I just REALLY want him to have a puppo.
> 
> Also I know people like it when food is actually described in fic and I didn’t do that with the food in this chapter. So here’s a sandwich recipe that my friend gave me that’s really fuckin delish.
> 
> Ingredients:  
> Cuban Bread Loaf  
> Black Forest Ham  
> Genoa Salami  
> Shredded Sharp Cheddar  
> Butter  
> Eggs  
> Green Onions  
> Bacon  
> ==============••••••••••••••••++++++++  
> Cook bacon first. While doing so, prep eggs for scrambling. Cut Cuban bread loaf into pieces. For croquette style, use end pieces. DO NOT CUT IN HALF. Instead, hollow it out. Cut a hole into the end piece, and take out the bread inside. Scramble eggs. Bacon should be done. While eggs are solidifying, cut up green onions and put in eggs. Take ingredients any order and cram into the hole in the bread. Cut piece of the bread you took out and use it as a cork. Wrap croquette in aluminum foil then put in panini press or oven. Press works better. Let it cool after then take foil off.
> 
> And here’s a recipe for Penne Alla Vodka. Enjoy ur fancy mac n’ cheese.  
> https://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-penne-alla-vodka-recipes-from-the-kitchn-175668
> 
> A corner sofa is an L shaped sofa. Meant to fit into a corner.   
> Also, the Wu’s poodle, Noodle, is upstairs sleeping. Like a good noodle.


	24. Grave Digger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another one bites the dust.

Siris breathed in the crisp morning air, watching as the warm glow of sunrise filtered between the buildings as he made his way through the city on his run. He had only recently started driving out to the city to go for his morning jog, having grown tired of seeing the same houses and the same people in the same neighborhood since he and his wife moved to Boston after the war. The first time he’d gone so far out of his way, he’d been surprised at how refreshing the change was. It was interesting to watch the city he’d spent so many years trying to clean up as a bounty hunter going through its morning routine.

He watched out of the corner of his eye as a woman stepped out of an apartment complex with three little dogs on leashes and smiled to himself as he jogged down the sidewalk. People were funny, and no matter where he went, that didn’t change.

He turned the corner onto the next street and made his way to the end of the block, stopping at the crosswalk to catch his breath as morning traffic filed past. He took a moment to stretch and loosen his shoulders a bit, eyes narrowing at the red and blue lights in the distance, near the pawn shop where Ziggy worked. They didn’t seem to be moving, he observed, and when the light signaled for him to cross the street, he decided to make his way towards them.

As he approached, he pulled his earbuds out and stuffed them in his pocket, counting three cop cars and noting the small crowd that had gathered across the street from where they were parked. _Oh jeeze, Ziggy. What did you do this time?_ Siris thought as he noticed the caution tape strewn across the entrance to the pawn shop. He walked over to the cop who was standing at the corner of the block near the crosswalk next to the pawn shop, asking “hey, what happened?”

The cop looked over at him, and frowned, and pointed with her hand across the street towards the crowd. “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to step back--”

“Hey, it’s cool Bailey,” said another cop that Siris recognized, approaching her from behind.

“No civilians near the crime scene, Clarke. You know the rules. I don’t care if he’s your friend,” Bailey replied with a frown as she looked over her shoulder at the other cop.

“He’s a bounty hunter. Not a civilian. You can relax now,” Clarke replied, putting a hand on Bailey’s shoulder and meeting Siris’ gaze with a smile.

“Oh,” Bailey said, crossing her arms and stepping to the side to let Clarke past.

“Sorry about that,” Clarke apologized, sticking his hands in his pockets. “She’s new. Isn’t familiar with who’s who around here.”

“Not a problem,” Siris said, glancing over at Bailey, then asked “so are you going to tell me what happened?”

“Break-in. Possible kidnapping,” Clarke replied.

 _“Kidnapping?”_ Siris repeated, incredulous. Then composed himself and asked “who? It’s not…”

“Ziggy? Yeah,” Clarke replied, nodding. “He was working last night, according to his coworker. Poor kid clocked in this morning and found blood everywhere.”

“Shit,” Siris breathed. “Was there a nine-one-one call?”

“Not until his coworker showed up for his shift this morning, no,” Clarke replied.

Siris looked past Clarke and Bailey to see a young man wearing the pawn shop’s uniform talking to one of the cops near the entrance to the store. Poor kid. “Any idea what happened?”

“Well, the forensics team is on their way, but based on observation, I wouldn’t say this was a robbery,” Clarke replied.

“Why’s that?”

“Nothing was missing. Cash register was full. Shelves were stocked. Back room was untouched,” Clarke replied with a shrug.

“I overheard some of the others talking. They think it might have something to do with the other kidnappings that have happened this week,” Bailey spoke up.

Siris stared at her, then looked back at Clarke and asked, “there are _more?”_

Clarke rubbed the back of his neck and looked away uncomfortably. “Yeah,” he replied, meeting Siris’ gaze. “But here’s the weird thing, they all did business with bounty hunters like you.”

Siris felt his heart sink, and he asked “you think that’s a connection?”

“Sure as hell isn’t a coincidence,” Bailey replied flatly.

Clarke glanced back at the crime scene, then leaned towards Siris and said “listen, everyone who’s gone missing so far has sold or rented equipment to bounty hunters who have taken down some big scores over the past few years. We haven’t found any bodies, but I’m willing to bet they’ll turn up eventually.”

“Do you think whoever did this has some sort of gang affiliation?” Siris asked.

“Maybe,” Clarke replied. “Not sure. Sure seems like it. You bounty hunters have been putting some heat on organized crime for a while. If you ask me, whoever did this is just taking out the competition before they send their own guys in and undo all your hard work.”

“Do you think they’re going to go after bounty hunters?” Siris asked.

“Who knows? But I do know that if gangsters start running the blocks you guys get your gear at, you’re gonna run out of ways to defend yourselves if they _do,”_ Clarke responded.

Siris took a deep breath, processing everything Clarke had told him. “You have my number, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you do me a favor and keep me updated on this?” Siris asked.

“I’ll do my best,” Clarke replied, but didn’t sound too confident.

“You’d probably be better off looking into this one on your own,” Bailey added. “This is the fifth one over the past two days, and we _still_ don’t have any leads.”

“Just...don’t go getting into anything you can’t handle, okay?” Clarke added.

“No promises,” Siris replied. “Thanks for the info,” he added as he turned and headed back down the street, pulling his phone out of his pocket after walking a few blocks and dialing Fox’s number. When she picked up, he said “Fox, I need you to call a meeting. Something’s up. I think it might be trouble.”

“Jesus. What’s going on?” Fox asked.

“Look I--” Siris cut off and glanced back towards the pawn shop. “I’ll tell you when we meet.”

“Fuck. Okay. Not sure I like _that,”_ Fox replied. “I’ll put something in the group chat. Have everyone meet us at the warehouse in an hour. Sound good?”

“Good,” Siris said with a nod, crossing the street. “I’ll see you then.”

 

* * *

 

“So let me run through this again real fast to make sure I got it. You had me call a meeting to tell everyone that five weapons dealers in the city have gone _missing?”_ Fox asked incredulously, staring at Siris with her arms crossed.

“I know it doesn’t sound that important, but if Clarke was right, there could be more trouble coming,” Siris replied. “If they start taking out bounty hunters, the crime rate in this city is going to skyrocket and it could get harder for us to maneuver around here.”

Fox leaned back against the holo table, looking around at the rest of her teammates in the warehouse with a frown. She turned her gaze to Locus, hoping he had something to add.

“Well I mean, there are still _cops,”_ Grizzly spoke up.

“Yeah, and only like _four_ of them don’t take pay from organized crime to look the other way,” Rocket replied. “And I’m _one_ of them. And I’m not even a cop anymore.”

“Yuuuup,” Jersey sighed, shoving his hands into his pockets.

“Basically, the way the system works around here is the police pay off the bounty hunters to take out gang members and criminals, so that way another person gets the blame for it and the cops don’t have to worry about anyone coming after them or their families,” Siris explained.

“But the cops get all the credit when the news reporters show up, because they still gotta look good so they keep getting funding from the state,” Niner added.

“But everyone in the underground knows it wasn’t them,” Jersey said.

“Fuck,” Grizzly said, looking around at his teammates, horrified. “I had no idea shit was that bad around here.”

“They know how to keep it quiet,” Locus replied.

Fox was silent for a moment, processing all of this, then spoke. “You said your cop buddy told you that the dealers that went missing sold weapons to bounty hunters that took down big name players, right?”

Siris nodded. “Yeah.”

Fox looked over her shoulder at the holo table and said “Marz, I want you to run through the list of criminal organizations that do business around here and cross reference it with ones that have suffered notable losses from bounty hunters over the past year.”

The holo table flickered to life, and Marz said _“copy that.”_ She was silent for a moment, then a window popped up over the table displaying a list of names. _“Here’s what I’ve got.”_

Fox turned and peered at the list, frowning. It was way too long to be of any use. They’d never get through everyone. “Marz, are the names of the missing dealers documented in your system?”

_“Lemme check...Yeah.”_

“Do me a solid and cross reference that list with those names. Look for anyone who’s had any negative interactions with any of them,” Fox said.

_“Okay. Done.”_

Fox watched as the window with the list updated. The search results still came back as a high number.

“Have her look at bounty hunters who have taken down high-priority marks,” Locus suggested.

“Good idea,” Fox agreed. “Marz?”

_“I take it you want me to cross-ref them too?”_

“Please. See if you can find which of those bounty hunters got weapons from the arms dealers that have gone missing. And then cross-reference _them_ with those gangsters,” Fox said.

 _“Okie-dokie. Please standby.”_ A number of windows opened up over the holo table before the original one was brought to the front of the array.

The list had shortened to a few results, Fox observed, satisfied that they finally had something they could work with. “Alright, Marz, what’s the connection here?”

 _“Every single one of these guys has been hit pretty hard by bounty hunters over the past year or so. And all of them have sent people to harass our missing dealers for selling to bounty hunters. Another notable thing is that all but one of these guys are part of the illegal arms trade,”_ Marz replied.

“Clarke mentioned something about ‘taking out the competition,’” Siris mused.

“Something of that scale won’t be threatened by a few guys running pawn shops,” Niner replied.

“True, but Clarke made it sound like he thought it was less about the money and more about the fact that all the blocks that those shops are on are relatively clean of any criminal activity,” Siris said. “Ziggy’s shop was considered a ‘safe zone’ for pretty much everyone in the area because of all the bounty hunter traffic that ran through there. We kept any trouble away just by doing business with him. The other dealers were the same way, too.”

“Interesting,” Fox said, thinking hard.

Locus looked over at the holo table and said “run a check to see which of the people on that list have had conflicts with each other.”

_“Say please.”_

“Please,” Locus sighed.

_“Okay!”_

Fox looked over at Locus with narrowed eyes. “What are you thinking?” she asked.

“This could be a power grab,” Locus replied.

“Fuck. The last thing this place needs it urban warfare,” Jersey spat, shaking his head.

“That won’t happen if we take care of whatever this is before it gets out of hand,” Siris replied.

 _“So I’ve got something,”_ Marz spoke up. _“All of the gang leaders_ **_have_ ** _had trouble with each other, but they’ve_ **_all_ ** _had an issue with_ **_this_ ** _guy.”_

Fox watched as a profile was pulled to the front of the array over the holo table. “Gabriel Abbott,” she said, reading off his name.

“Son of a bitch,” Siris muttered behind her.

Fox looked over her shoulder at him. “You know this guy?”

Siris nodded up at the projection and said “dealt with a few of his goons a few months ago on a run.”

“Any of them responsible for some of those close-calls you mentioned you’d had when we first met?” Fox asked, raising an eyebrow, sensing there was something he wasn’t telling her.

“More like all of them,” Siris replied. “This checks out. Word is, Abbott’s looking to put himself in charge of the underground around here.”

“How ambitious of him,” Fox said flatly, unimpressed.

“Boss, he’s real bad news,” Jersey spoke up. “I know a couple of people on my block who fell in bad with his crew and they just up and disappeared a week later. Cops still haven’t found any bodies.”

“So he knows how to make people disappear. Interesting,” Fox mused. “Either way, regardless of whether or not he’s involved, though it certainly sounds like he might be, he’s a threat. So we treat him and his men like they are.”

“Shoot first, ask questions later?” Grizzly asked.

“Nope.” Fox shook her head and looked back at him. “I don’t want to poke the hornet’s nest quite yet. Not until we really know what we’re dealing with. Which is why we’re going to go out and find some answers to see whether or not he’s the one causing trouble.”

 _“I’ve managed to find some known locations where Abbott runs his business,”_ Marz spoke up.

“Shoot,” Fox said.

_“I got one on East Fifth Street, one on Summer Street, and one on Morrissey Boulevard. There are a few smaller ones, but these are the documented fronts.”_

“So the cops know about these and have them put in the database, but no one’s doing anything about them?” Grizzly asked, crossing his arms and leaning forward slightly.

 _“Considering Abbott’s men like to tip the cops off to other operations being run by smaller gangs, A-K-A, their competition, they have a reason to let it slide,”_ Marz replied.

“Why am I not surprised?” Siris asked, exchanging a knowing look with Locus.

“Alright, so this is how this is going to work,” Fox said, turning to face the others. “We’ll cover more ground if we split up. So, Siris, you take Niner. Locus you’re with Jersey. And Griz, you’re with me.” She looked over at Rocket and added “Rocket, I want you ears to the ground, okay? Go meet up with some of your cop buddies and see what they can find out for us. Maybe there’s something that wasn’t logged in the system. Be careful. We don’t know who’s on our side over there, so only talk to the people you know you can trust, got it?”

“Sure thing,” Rocket replied.

Fox took out her phone and pulled up Kimball’s contact. “I’m going to ping Kimball and give her the sit-rep. We’ll wait ‘till it’s dark, meet back here, then fan out into our teams and do some recon, alright?”

“Copy that,” Jersey said with a nod.

“Thanks, boss,” Siris added.

“Alright,” Fox said, “everyone meet back here at seven, got it? Let’s break.”

 

* * *

 

“I cannot _believe_ Abbott’s running a booze shop as a front. That’s like, some old-timey mafia shit right there,” Jersey said, staring out the windshield of the car at the liquor store.

Locus didn’t say anything, not particularly interested in a conversation at the moment, and instead pulled out his phone and wrote _[we’re in position,]_ in the group chat.

“So how are we gonna do this?” Jersey asked. “I’ve been to this store a few times. They’ve got a back alley. But like, store closes at midnight. We’re not gonna wait here all night, are we?”

“If we have to,” Locus replied, cutting the engine and stuffing the keys in his pocket.

“Without any air conditioning?” Jersey asked with a grin. “Damn, you’re a hardass.”

Locus side-eyed him, annoyed, then to his phone, said “Marz, can you get me a visual on the inside of the store?”

 _“I mean, I_ **_could,”_ ** Marz’s voice replied on speaker.

“Do it,” Locus said, then thought better of it and added “please.”

 _“Aw,_ **_look_ ** _at that character growth.”_

 _“Marz,”_ Locus growled.

_“Jesus, okay. Chill out. I’m broadcasting the camera feed to your phone.”_

Locus watched as his phone’s screen lit up as Marz sent the security feed to it.

 _“Swipe right to get to the other feeds. There are four cameras,”_ Marz explained.

“Thank you,” Locus replied.

_“Choke on it.”_

Beside him, Jersey made a shocked sound. “Fuck dude, what did you do to deserve being talked to like that?”

“It’s a long story,” Locus replied, not particularly in the mood to spill everything that happened on Chorus to someone who was still more or less a complete stranger to him. He swiped through the camera feeds, watching as a single customer went up to the cashier, was rung up, and then started to leave. “We’ve got a window,” Locus said, looking over at Jersey.

“What’s the play?”

“We go in, talk to the cashier, see what they know.”

“What, that’s it?” Jersey asked. “Shouldn’t we get them out from behind the register so they don’t push the panic button?”

“That’s...a real thing?” Locus asked dubiously.

“Yeah dude,” Jersey said. “It’s not just a TV thing. You’ve never worked in retail, have you?”

“No,” Locus replied, watching as the customer he had just seen on his phone walked out of the liquor store. “Let’s go,” he said, getting out of the car and shutting the door behind him. Jersey did the same, and the two walked towards the store.

“Okay, so there’s a chance I might know who’s on shift,” Jersey said. “So why don’t I focus on getting them out from behind the register, and you do all the interrogation stuff? You probably know what questions to ask.”

“Sounds good,” Locus replied, crossing the street and stepping onto the sidewalk, pulling the door open and letting Jersey go through first before following him in. He quickly turned the sign dangling from the door handle so the words “sorry, we’re closed,” faced the outside while Jersey approached the register.

“Ay yo Tray-Cee!” Jersey exclaimed the minute his eyes fell on the cashier. “What’s up man? How you been?”

 _“Shit_ Ty. I haven’t seen you around here in _ages!”_ Tracey replied, walking out from behind the register to shake Jersey’s hand and give him a clap on the back at the same time. “Where you been, man?”

 _Well that takes care of that problem,_ Locus thought, watching the exchange as he walked over to stand nearby.

“Moved a few streets over,” Jersey replied, jerking his head to the side for emphasis. “They got a liquor store the next block over.”

“Man, whatever happened to customer loyalty, huh?” Tracey laughed, shaking his head. “Good to see you though, man.” He nodded over at Locus. “Who’s this, your big brother?”

Locus couldn’t help but raise his eyebrows in surprise at that and exchange a look with Jersey.

“Nah, nah, man. We’re not related,” Jersey replied, grinning.

“Fuck dude, coulda fooled me. You look like twins, almost,” Tracey said, shoving his hands into his pockets and leaning back against the counter.

“Nah, nah. I’m like his dollar store knock-off copy,” Jersey said. “They say everyone’s got a twin out there somewhere, right?”

“Shit, mine lived with me ‘till he turned eighteen. I know it,” Tracey replied with a grin. He stood up straight then and asked “so what can I do for ya? What brings you all the way here? Why not pop by your new local liquor store?”

Jersey’s smile faded a little, and he glanced over at Locus before saying “business.”

And like that, Tracey’s entire demeanor shifted, his eyes darting towards the front door before he looked back at Jersey with a serious expression. “Wait like, _business_ business?” he asked in a hushed voice.

“Like the illegal shit? Yeah,” Jersey replied.

“Fuck, dude. I didn’t think you were the type,” Tracey said, looking taken aback.

“He’s not,” Locus said, crossing his arms and looking down at Tracey.

Tracey’s eyes darted to him, then over to Jersey, and hissed a breath between his teeth. “Motherfucker. Don’t tell me he’s a fuckin’ narc--”

“Dude, chill,” Jersey said, putting up a hand to stop him before he could continue. “We’re not with the cops. We, uh--”

“We’re doing recon for a group of U.N.S.C. Marines operating in the city,” Locus said, quickly picking up where Jersey left off before Tracey got any ideas about their confidence levels.

“Oh, sure. You’re not narcs, you’re just fuckin’ soldiers. Great,” Tracey huffed, crossing his arms and glaring over at Jersey.

“Look, I’m not-- We’re not going to rat you or anyone who works here out. We just heard that some people who deal with bounty hunters are going missing, and we wanna make sure that whoever’s responsible isn’t going to be a problem,” Jersey said, trying to soothe the situation.

Tracey looked over at Locus. “So what, am I supposed to tell you two about how we do business here or something?”

“That would be in your best interest,” Locus replied evenly.

“Nah, what’s in my best interest is keeping my mouth the fuck shut,” Tracey said. “Cos if anyone finds out I’ve been talkin’, I’m gonna wind up going missing too.”

“We have a way to delete any security footage of anything we discuss here,” Locus said. “No one will find out.”

“Yeah, until they do,” Tracey said bitterly.

“Hey, listen,” Jersey spoke up. “Look, you and I lived on the same street until a few months ago, okay? I know the shit you had to put up with because of the gangbangers over there. Shit, your mom lives like three buildings away from me. I see her pretty much every day. She’s fuckin’ worried about you, cuz.”

“If the person who’s responsible for the disappearances becomes a problem, and they _will,_ helping us gather information on them will speed up the process of giving you a fresh start,” Locus added.

Tracey held both of them in a glare for a moment, then sighed, his shoulders sagging a little. “Fuck,” he said, looking away, towards the ground. _“Fuck._ You’re a fuckin’ pain in the ass, you know that Gonzalez?”

Jersey offered a light grin. “Part of my job, little dude.”

“Don’t fuckin’ call me ‘little dude,’ asshole. I’m not a baby,” Tracey huffed.

“You’re like twenty-six, buddy,” Jersey chuckled. “Anyways, can you help us?”

Tracey looked at him and Locus and sighed again. “Fuck it. If it keeps these motherfuckers from shaking me down every damn day of the week, then sure. Follow me to the back.” He turned with a wave of his hand and started towards the back of the store.

Locus and Jersey exchanged a look and followed him, stepping through a door into the storage room. When they got inside, Locus took note of the closed garage door at the far side of the small room, figuring it must lead to a loading dock of some sorts.

“When we get in our booze on Tuesday morning, the shipment always comes with a couple of crates of guns and shit,” Tracey said, leading them over to a stack of boxes. He opened one, revealing a wooden crate inside labelled as ammunition. “Then on Thursday, we get a guy who comes in and buys all of them off of us to sell to local gangbangers.”

“Where does the shipment come from?” Locus asked.

Tracey flipped the box shut and taped the flaps back together with masking tape. “No idea. Not for sure anyways. Yesterday I was on shift when they unloaded all of this, and I heard one of the guys mention something about a warehouse near the marina.”

“Does he _know_ that you heard him say that?” Jersey asked.

“Naw, cuz. I keep my earbuds in whenever I’m unloading and shit. But I was in between songs when he said it,” Tracey replied.

“Lucky break,” Jersey said.

“I guess,” Tracey replied, shrugging. “Anyways, that’s the best I can do for you.” He looked over at Locus. “You said you could do something about the security footage?”

Locus pulled out his phone and said “Marz, can you delete the footage of us coming in here?”

 _“Fine,”_ Marz replied.

“Yo, you’re wired?” Tracey asked.

“Look, don’t worry about it,” Jersey said, ushering him towards the door.

Locus followed, stepping back into the store and watching as Tracey retreated behind the counter.

“Hey, thanks for helping us out, yeah?” Jersey said, offering Tracey his hand.

Tracey shook it begrudgingly and said “yeah man, just make sure none of this shit gets back to me, okay?”

“We will,” Locus said, and started towards the door.

“See you around man,” Jersey said over his shoulder as he followed him, hurrying to get through front door when he saw that Locus was holding it for him.

The two walked in silence until they reached the car. “I’m going to contact Fox and give her an update,” Locus said, getting in on the driver’s side and turning the key.

“Cool,” Jersey said, hopping in. “That was a bust. I hope the others are having better luck than we are.”

Locus didn’t say anything, but he agreed. They hadn’t gotten much information, and what little they did obtain wasn’t great. Though he hoped that Fox would be able to make some use of it. _Only one way to find out,_ he thought, pulling up Fox’s contact and hitting the call button.

 

* * *

 

“Whoah, whoah whoah, _hey!_ Take it easy man!”

“Listen to me, I know you and your friends are running guns for Abbott. You’re going to tell me _everything_ I want to know,” Siris snarled, twisting his victim’s arm further behind his back and pressing his gun to the back of his head.

The man lifted his head slightly off the table his face had been slammed down on and looked as far back over his shoulder as he dared to with a gun pressed to his skull. “L-look alright. I’ll talk. Okay. Just fuckin’ let me go, man.”

Siris glanced back at Niner, who was standing near the door of the darkened shipping store, looking through the glass door, gun drawn and held pointed at the ground. She caught his gaze and nodded. “Take your time,” she said.

Siris looked back at the man, eyes darting to his unconscious co-worker on the floor for a moment before he said “I’ll let you go _after_ you talk.”

“Fuck. Fuck, okay,” the man gritted out, holding up his free hand in a gesture of submission. “W-we get a shipment of military-grade weaponry in every Saturday. Big one. Usually disguised as furniture or some shit. From there, Abbott sends some of his guys to pick it up in a shipping truck that looks like one of ours.”

“Where do they go?” Siris asked.

“Fuck, I don’t know, man. I don’t ask any questions. I’m just trying to run a business. I let them do whatever the fuck they want to keep myself from getting shot.”

Siris let out a frustrated sigh. Great, a dead-end. “What do you know about the missing weapons dealers?” he asked.

“I-I didn’t hear anything about that, man!”

“Are you _sure?”_ Siris asked, pressing his gun a little harder into the back of the man’s head.

“F-fuck dude, okay! Jesus! Listen, I just heard that Abbott was getting sick of bounty hunters fucking up his boys and was planning to do something about it, that’s it! I swear! That’s all I know!” the man exclaimed.

Siris took a deep breath, then pulled his gun away and grabbed the man by the back of his shirt, hoisting him upright before letting him go and taking a few steps back.

The man whirled, looking at him wide-eyed. “Okay? A-are we fuckin’ done?”

“We’re done,” Siris growled. “But listen, you never crossed paths with me, and I never heard anything from you, understand?”

The man swallowed hard and nodded vigorously. “Yeah. Yeah of course!”

Siris held him in a glare for a moment, then turned and headed for the door. “Let’s go,” he said as he pushed it open and stepped outside past Niner, pulling the bandana off of his face and shoving it in his pocket.

Niner holstered her gun and followed him, catching up to him as he made his way briskly down the sidewalk. “Hey, you gonna tell me what the hell just happened back there?” she called after him, taking off the black mask that was covering the lower half of her face and stowing it away.

Siris didn’t say anything, but pulled the phone out of his pocket, reading the message Marz had sent him telling him she’d just deleted all the security footage of the interrogation he’d just given. He rounded the corner, pocketing his phone, a thick cloud of thoughts swarming in his head.

“Hey--”

Siris heard Niner’s voice behind him and felt her hand on his shoulder, and he pulled away from her, but stopped walking and turned halfway to face her, his hands balled into fists at his side. “I’ve had too many close calls,” he said bitterly. “By now Abbott knows who I am.” He looked away. “If he comes after my family--”

“Hey, that’s not gonna happen,” Niner said, shaking her head. “Didn’t Fox say she was gonna keep them safe?”

Siris looked over at her tiredly. “She did, but--”

“Okay, so don’t you trust her?”

“I do, but--”

“But you’re still worried. And I get that, but you don’t have to go around sticking guns in people’s faces!” Niner said.

Siris just sighed and stared in the direction of where he had parked his car. “I’m just having second thoughts, I guess.”

“Yeah, and I get that. But it’s still no excuse,” Niner replied.

“I-I know. Sorry.”

“Hey don’t apologize to _me,”_ Niner said, leaning back a little. “You didn’t stick a gun in _my_ face. If you had, you wouldn’t be alive for us to be having this conversation.”

Siris gave her an annoyed look. He _really_ wasn’t in the mood for her sense of humor at the moment.

“And besides, you’ve been going it solo for _how_ long?” Niner asked. “Don’t you think your odds are a little better having someone with as much power as Fox around?”

“I…” Siris stared at the ground. “I just wasn’t expecting things to get this messy so quickly.”

“Well...I get that,” Niner said, looking to the side and shrugging. “And I know you mentioned on on our way out from Grizzly’s barbecue that you were worried how heated the things you and The Cleanup Crew were going to get. But I think it was going to get like this with or without you working with the rest of the team. I mean, it _sounds_ like Abbott had this planned.”

“Yeah,” Siris sighed. “I guess you’re right.”

“I mean, I always am, but yeah,” Niner replied, a small grin forming on her face. “Now maybe we should split before trouble shows up. And we should definitely update Fox on what we learned. I don’t like the sound of a criminal organization getting their hands on military-grade weaponry.”

“Me neither,” Siris replied, following her as she brushed past and headed for his car. “I’ll give her a ring,” he said, walking around to the driver’s side of the vehicle. “And Pierce?” he asked before either of them got in.

“Yeah?” Niner said.

“Thanks.”

Niner cracked a smile and pulled the door on her side open. “Don’t mention it.”

 

* * *

 

“Hey, holy shit! Gracie’s in the house!”

Rocket rolled his eyes good naturedly as one of the officers at a desk near the front of his old station announced his arrival to the rest of them. He was met with a chorus of greetings and claps on the back as he made his way to his old partner’s desk.

“Do my eyes deceive me?” his former partner asked, standing and holding his arms out.

“Good to see you, Andrew,” Rocket said, pulling him into a hug.

Andrew tousled his hair and stepped back. “Fuck, dude. I thought I’d never see you back here.”

Rocket shrugged, side-eyeing the floor. “Yeah, well. It’s been a rough couple of months.”

“Yeah, I figured,” Andrew said, his smile fading a little. He was silent for a moment, then gestured for Rocket to follow him and turned and headed towards the back hall that led to the break room. “C’mon. Let’s grab a coffee real fast.”

“What, too good for Starbucks?” Rocket asked, following him.

“Nah, I like me some hot liquid shit like they have here to keep me awake instead. None of that basic white girl shit,” Andrew said, opening the door to the break room and stepping in. Rocket followed him and noticed two other officers were hanging out on the sofas, both of whom he recognized.

“Oh hey! Danny, what’s up, my man?” said the shorter of the two, saluting him with a coffee mug.

Rocket gave him a nod. “Hey Max. Hey Bruce.”

Bruce, the other man in the room, just grunted in acknowledgement and went back to looking at something on his phone.

“So what brings you here?” Andrew asked, walking over to the coffee pot and pouring some into a paper cup. He offered it to Rocket, who politely declined.

“I was actually wondering if you could do me a favor,” Rocket replied.

Andrew took a sip of the coffee he just poured, pulled a face, then looked up at Rocket and asked “what kind of favor?”

“Just…” Rocket glanced over at the other two men in the room, then said quietly “have you heard anything about...people going missing over the past few days?”

“Uh…” Andrew said.

“Why, you know one of em?” Bruce asked without looking up from his phone.

Rocket glanced over at him. “Well... _no._ But…”

 _“Shit,_ Gracie. You’ve only been off the force for a few of months! Don’t tell me you got caught up in some criminal shit,” Max said, leaning back into the couch he was seated on.

“No, no! It’s nothing like that!” Rocket said quickly. “I just...made a friend who happens to be friends with some bounty hunters, is all.”

Max raised his eyebrows and looked over at Andrew, who seemed equally surprised.

“So you didn’t come all this way just to say hi, then?” Andrew asked.

“I did,” Rocket said, feeling a little guilty. “But I also wanted to help out if I could.”

 _“How_ long have you known these people?” Max asked.

“A few weeks, but they’re really nice. And bounty hunters are the good guys, right?” Rocket replied, beginning to feel like this conversation wasn’t going at all as planned.

“Arguably,” Bruce replied.

“Alright, listen, you’re my friend, and you used to be my partner, so I figure it would be a dick move not to let you in on it,” Andrew sighed. “But you gotta promise me that you’re not gonna go around telling everyone what you heard here, okay?”

“Can I at least warn my friends?” Rocket asked.

 _“Sure,”_ Andrew said, rolling his eyes. “But you didn’t get anything from us, and you _need_ to tell them that it can’t trace back to you, because this shit might get you hurt.”

“Okay, I promise,” Rocket replied, feeling a little satisfied that they were finally getting somewhere.

Andrew leaned back against the counter the coffee maker was sitting on and said “the current working theory is that Abbott--you know, the guy we were having trouble with when you joined the force? Him. We think he’s trying to cut off resources to all the local bounty hunters, since they’ve been interfering with his business.”

“After that, we think he’s gonna clean house,” Max added. He glanced over at Bruce and said “at least...that’s what we’re worried he’s gonna do.”

Bruce put his phone away and took a sip of his coffee, meeting Rocket’s eyes. “You made the wrong friends at the wrong time.”

Rocket let out a nervous laugh, his mind jumping to Siris and what sort of danger he might be in. “There isn’t...Abbott doesn’t have a way of figuring out who and where the bounty hunters _are,_ does he?”

“Not sure,” Max said, shaking his head. “We haven’t seen or heard anything that suggests that. But I wouldn’t be surprised with how resourceful the guy’s proven to be.”

Rocket swallowed hard. “Yeah, I really hope you’re wrong.”

“Y’know, it’s funny,” Bruce said suddenly, taking a sip of his coffee and eyeing Rocket curiously. “You drop outta the force, and the next time we see you, you’ve turned informant to a couple of bounty hunters.”

Rocket felt himself pale a little. “Wh-No, no! I’m not-- I’m not an _informant._ Look, they’re just really good people and I wanna make sure they don’t get hurt. Some of them have families, y’know?”

“C’mon Bruce, lay off the kid,” Andrew said.

Bruce just scoffed and took another sip of his coffee, but Rocket didn’t like the way he was looking at him.

“Well, anyways, thanks for the info,” Rocket said, looking at his watch, trying to make it seem like he was on the clock.

“You got somewhere to be, Gracie?” Max asked.

 _Thank god,_ Rocket thought, relieved that someone had noticed. “Yeah, I’ve got a date, actually.”

 _“You?”_ Andrew teased.

“Man, shut up,” Rocket huffed, allowing a smile to form on his face.

“What’re they like?” Max asked.

 _Shit!_ “Uh, I actually don’t know? It’s a blind date,” Rocket lied.

Bruce burst out laughing. “Daniel Grace on a blind date? Shit, I wish I was off tonight so I could go and spectate.”

Andrew rolled his eyes, then to Rocket said “you’ll be fine. Let us know how it goes though, yeah?”

Rocket breathed an internal sigh of relief and said “yeah, I will.”

Andrew nodded, then gestured towards the door and said “alright, now beat it. We got work to do, alright? Enjoy your date.”

“I will. Thanks guys,” Rocket said as he stood and made his way out of the break room, earning a chorus of replies before the door shut behind him. He made his way back to the front of the station, bidding everyone a good night before stepping out onto the street.

The cool evening air felt great on his face, and he took a moment to breathe it in, listening to the sounds of the city. Then he started down the sidewalk and rounded the corner, heading towards where he parked his car, pulling out his phone as he did so. Fox needed to hear about this.

 

* * *

 

“Alright, low and slow. Don’t be seen and don’t be heard,” Fox whispered, her eyes on the loading deck behind the liquidation warehouse Marz had directed them to.

“I’m not exactly a stealth guy, but I’ll do my best,” Grizzly replied from directly behind her.

Fox nodded, and the two of them crept out of the small grove of trees behind the warehouse and headed towards the loading deck, pistols drawn and held low and at the ready. They made it to the loading deck and huddled against it directly below the open garage door. Fox rose out of her crouch a little to steal a look into the storage room, then gave Grizzly a nod when she saw that the coast was clear before climbing up.

“So what are we looking for?” Grizzly asked, following her.

“Anything that’ll point us in the right direction,” Fox replied, staying low as she passed a row of boxes, eyes scanning the back of the warehouse they were in.

“So, start opening boxes?” Grizzly asked, following her.

Fox shook her head, then turned to get a good look at their surroundings. “There has to be like an office or something somewhere that we can get shipment information off of,” she said, eyes scanning over the large space. A noise to her left drew her attention suddenly, and she ducked behind a tall pile of boxes on a pallet, peeking around the corner to catch a glimpse of a man wearing a maroon apron with a company logo on the front of it walk through the doors at the other side of the storage room. Fox followed him with her eyes, slowly creeping around the stack of boxes as he walked past her to avoid being seen. To her left, Grizzly, who had taken cover behind a forklift, did the same.

The two watched as the man walked to the edge of the loading dock, sat down with his legs dangling over the edge, and lit a cigarette.

Fox watched him a moment, then met eyes with Grizzly, who took a deep breath and exhaled silently, widening his eyes in a look that seemed to say “that was close.”

Fox looked back at the door the man had come through. There was a staircase next to it that wrapped behind an extrusion from the wall of the storage room. Fox turned her eyes upwards to where the rectangular extrusion met the ceiling and noted the row of windows that wrapped around it to form a right angle at the corner. _That_ **_has_ ** _to be an office,_ she thought. She looked back at Grizzly and jerked her head in the direction of the stairwell.

He nodded, glanced back at the man sitting by the loading dock, then quickly made his way over to her position. “What’s the play?” he whispered, crouching beside her.

“I’m going to see if Marz can locate some sort of computer system up there that’ll give us information on incoming shipments,” Fox replied quietly.

“We’re not going up there ourselves?”

“Don’t wanna get boxed in,” Fox said. “But it’s good to know where the office is in case we need to grab the hard drive and make a run for it.”

Grizzly nodded.

Fox put a hand to the comm in her ear and said “Marz, what can you get for me?”

 _“Way ahead of you,”_ came the reply. _“I’ve already downloaded a ton of invoices and whatnot. Though I’m pretty sure anything you’d be looking for wouldn’t be uploaded to the system, so I’m looking at the security feeds and running the number of boxes loaded off of the trucks that come by with what’s written down.”_

“Find anything so far?” Fox asked quietly, glancing around the corner when she heard the worker who had passed them stand up with a scuff of his feet.

 _“A few boxes that apparently had like, wardrobes or something, were dropped off last week, but they weren’t logged in the system. Probably guns,”_ Marz replied.

“Probably,” Fox agreed, keeping a close eye on the man near the loading dock. “When’s their next incoming shipment?”

_“Today, actually. Should be arriving any time now.”_

“You’re kidding,” Fox said flatly. “We should have asked _before_ we came here.”

“What’s wrong?” Grizzly asked, raising his eyebrows at her.

“Warehouse has a shipment coming by in the next few minutes,” Fox replied, looking back at him.

“Talk about good timing,” Grizzly said. Then asked “so what’s the plan?”

“Siris said that there’s a warehouse by the marina that one of the fronts gets shipments from,” Fox replied. “I’m going to have Marz follow the truck that comes by back to wherever it docks to see if we can get an address. Even if it doesn’t go to the marina, we’ll still have at least _one_ location to check out.”

“And what about us?”

“We wait until we’re clear, then grab a look at whatever they drop off. Figuring out exactly what they’re shipping may help determine where it’s coming from,” Fox explained.

“Nice,” Grizzly said, nodding. He glanced back over his shoulder towards where the worker was standing, his arms raised back over his head in a stretch. “What happens if we get caught?”

“Don’t be,” Fox replied warningly, and looked in the direction of the loading deck as the sound of a vehicle approaching drew closer. She watched as a shipping truck pulled into the depot and slowly back into the deck, the high-pitched back-up alarm echoing through the storage room until it rolled to a stop.

“So are we just gonna sit here, or…?” Grizzly trailed off, looking at Fox expectantly.

“I guess so,” Fox replied with a sigh.

The two watched as a pair of men hopped out of the truck and helped the other worker unload the trunk, going back and forth, dropping off boxes into an empty corner of the storage room until there were none left to grab. Fox watched through narrowed eyes as the worker and the drivers each grabbed a few large, empty boxes that had images of furniture on them and loaded them into the back of the truck. Then the warehouse worker bid the truck drivers farewell, and the two men hopped into their vehicle and drove off.

Fox listened to the sound of its engine fading into the distance, her eyes on the worker who was looking over a few boxes with a datapad in his hand. “Marz?”

 _“Got eyes on traffic cams now,”_ Marz replied.

Fox nodded, hand to her comm, then looked back at Grizzly before nodding in the direction of the boxes the worker was standing near. “Once he’s gone, we’ll check those out,” she told him quietly.

“So, in like, two seconds,” Grizzly clarified, eyes on the worker, who had tucked the datapad into a pouch on his apron and was walking back towards the doors he had entered from.

Fox waited until he was out of sight, and the door had shut behind him before she slowly rose to her feet, flicking her eyes left and right to make sure the room they were in was clear. “Okay,” she breathed, “we’re good.” Then she holstered her gun and started towards the new stack of boxes.

“Great,” Grizzly said from behind her, dusting off his pants as he rose to his feet and followed after her.

Fox didn’t say anything, but reached the boxes and looked over them, arms crossed. All of the boxes were taped shut. Even though Marz was going to delete any camera footage of them in the building, it would still be obvious that _someone_ tampered with the delivery. _There’s no elegant way to go about this,_ she thought, frustrated.

“What’s wrong?” Grizzly asked, walking up beside her and holstering his gun.

“They’re gonna know someone was here if we cut the tape off of these boxes,” Fox replied.

“Oh,” Grizzly said, and fell silent for a while before speaking up again. “Well, they’re gonna get cut open anyways.”

“Ugh,” Fox groaned, throwing up a hand in defeat. “Fair enough, I guess. Let’s just make this quick.” She uncrossed her arms and pulled a combat knife out of her jacket. “Marz, which of these boxes wasn’t on the manifest?”

 _“The two big ones to your left,”_ Marz replied in Fox’s ear.

“Just two?” Fox asked.

_“A bigger number would probably draw attention.”_

“Fair enough,” Fox shrugged. She walked over to the boxes Marz had identified, gesturing for Grizzly to follow her. Crouching down next to one of them, she slit through the tape with her knife, folding the flaps of the box back once she had finished, muttering “motherfucker,” when she saw what was inside.

Sitting in the box was a weapons crate. Military-grade. Looked like something Fox would expect to see in an outpost armory during the war. She popped the clasps on the lid and opened it up, looking down at the weapons packed in the crate encased by foam.

“Jesus. Where are they _getting_ these from?” Grizzly breathed.

“Marz?” Fox asked.

 _“Truck is still en-route to wherever it’s headed,”_ Marz replied.

“We’ll find out soon, then,” Fox said, then reached into the crate and pulled out one of the guns, turning it over in her hands to examine it. It was a BR85HB Service Rifle. The sort used by soldiers. “Looks like the rumor that they’re selling military weapons checks out,” Fox muttered. She balanced the rifle on her knee, pulling her phone out and snapping a picture of the serial number before she placed the weapon back into its foam encasement and shut the lid on the crate. The sound of tape being cut to her left drew her attention, and she looked over to see Grizzly opening the other box. To her dismay, she saw it contained another weapons crate. With a sigh, she shook her head and stood, noting a roll of masking tape that was sitting atop a box a few rows of pallets away. She retrieved it and brought it back to the box she had opened, taping it shut right as Grizzly pulled a weapon out of the second crate and grabbed a picture of its serial number.

“This isn’t good,” he said, looking over at her as she finished taping her box shut.

“Tell me about it,” Fox replied, tossing the roll of masking tape to him.

He caught it one-handed and set it on the floor before packing the rifle back into its container, shutting the lid, and folding the box flaps shut. “Hopefully we can figure this out before it becomes a problem,” he said, taping the box shut and tossing the tape back to Fox.

She caught it and carried it back over to its original spot, placing it back on top of the box she had found it on before turning back to Grizzly. “Hopefully,” she sighed, putting her hands on her hips as she thought a moment. They had all they could really get right now. Discreetly, anyways. She wasn’t interested in roughing up a few employees that would only tattle to their bosses later. She didn’t have enough of a reputation to scare anyone into silence. Not yet, anyways. “Alright,” she said, dropping her hands. “Let’s get out of here. I’m gonna put a call through to the rest of the team. We’ll rendezvous back at H-Q and see what the next steps are. I want to shut this thing down before it even gets its footing.”

Grizzly nodded. “Good idea.”

Fox turned and started back in the direction they had entered from. When they reached the loading dock, she stopped short of the edge, nodding for Grizzly to go ahead of her before she looked back in the direction of one of the security cameras hanging from the ceiling. She stuck her index finger in the air and whirled it around, signalling to Marz, then hopped off of the edge after Grizzly.

 

* * *

 

“Everyone’s here?” Fox asked, looking up from her phone at all of her teammates.

“In body, yeah. But in spirit, I’m on the beach surrounded by girls,” Niner retorted from where she was straddling a chair with her arms folded on top of the back of it. Next to her, Siris buried his face in his hands.

Fox just rolled her eyes. “Okay, listen. I just got a text from Marz. You know how I mentioned she was following a truck through traffic cam footage? Yeah. She has an address.” She looked over at where Locus and Jersey were standing on the other side of Siris and said “the information you guys obtained from Tracey checks out. They get shipments from a warehouse on the marina. Judging by what Grizzly and I saw, I think it’s safe to theorize that they take empty boxes from both the liquidation warehouse and the liquor store you two visited to use as disguises for their weapons shipments. After that, they probably run guns all over town, only dropping off a few crates at each front to avoid suspicion.”

“Still no word on who their supplier is?” Locus asked.

“Believe me, if I had a name, I’d have given it to you guys. _Especially_ considering what Rocket found out for us earlier,” Fox replied, glancing over at Rocket, who cringed slightly.

Siris pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. He took a deep breath, then dropped his hand and looked over at Fox and asked “so what’s our next move?”

“We figure out where the weapons are coming from, and where those missing people went,” Fox replied, looking over at Rocket. “Rocket, if we find anything, will the police have our backs?”

“I mean, if you pay them off well enough, then yeah, they should,” Rocket replied.

“We’re handing this over to the authorities?” Jersey asked. “Is that smart?”

“Well obviously we can’t just let Abbott go around kidnapping and killing people. And we don’t know how this could affect us later. Plus an official police investigation will light a fire under him that could draw him out into the open,” Fox replied.

“Fair enough,” Jersey said. “So what now?”

 _“Now_   we’re going to that address, doing some recon, and gathering some intel. After that, we’ll look at what we’ve come up with and make our next move accordingly,” Fox replied. “Sound good?”

The others nodded and gave murmurs of agreement, and Siris met her eyes and said “thank you.”

Fox nodded, then said “alright, let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

Siris leaned around the corner of the wall he was taking cover behind, eyes on the warehouse that Marz had identified as their target. The slight drizzle strengthened the smell of asphalt and dead fish and petrol and cut lines through the orange glow of the lights mounted on buildings and poles along the docks. In the distance, lightning flickered over the open ocean, and Siris could make out whitecaps for miles from shore when he drew back into cover, breathing in deeply to try to calm his nerves. “Entrance is clear,” he said, looking over at Fox, who was hugging the wall beside him.

She nodded and put a hand to the comm on her ear and asked “hey, Eyes-In-The-Sky, what’s the report?”

“Six targets. Two by the other entrance. One by a stack of boxes. Two more by the truck.

And one on the catwalk,” Locus replied over comms.

“Ugh,”  Fox said. “This is gonna be a mess.”

“Wait,” Locus said. “A few of them look like they’re headed out.”

“How many?” Siris asked.

“Four,” came Jersey’s voice. “Catwalk boy, box boy, and the two by the entrance are leaving. Guess their shift’s up.”

“Keep me updated,” Fox replied.

Siris listened idly, eyes on the ground, adrenaline already seeping into his veins. The sooner they got this over with, the sooner his family and the rest of the bounty hunters in the city would be safe. He sighed and looked over at Fox, who, to his surprise, seemed to be watching him closely. “What?” he asked.

“You’re nervous,” she said evenly.

Under his bandana, Siris frowned. “I just want to get this over with.”

“Understandable,” Fox replied. “If it makes you feel any better, It’ll all be over soon.” She tilted her head slightly, then asked “or is this not the only thing you’re worried about?”

Siris felt his chest clench slightly, and looked away. “You promise, if things don’t go well, you’ll take care of my family?”

“First of all, yes. I already promised that,” Fox replied, her voice tight. “Second, don’t fucking say shit like that, because we’re all going to walk away fine. It’s just six guys.”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” Siris growled.

Fox just shrugged, then perked up when Locus’ voice came on over comms.

“The four from earlier just left in a car. The other two are staying behind and appear to be locking some things up.”

Siris leaned back around the corner, looking up at the roof of the warehouse, managing to pick out Locus’ silhouette as a flicker of lightning lit up the sky. “Noted,” he replied over comms.

“Griz, Niner, Rocket, how you three looking?” Fox asked.

“Currently watching the clown car leave the marina,” Rocket replied. “I don’t think we need to worry about them coming back.”

“Got eyes on the exit they came out of,” Grizzly added. “They left the doors wide open. Locus is right, the other two look like they’re wrapping it up too. One of them just grabbed their jacket out of a locker. Also the truck we saw earlier today is inside.”

“I’ve got a wonderful view of a closed door,” Niner said flatly. “Entrance you and Siris are near is padlocked shut. Let’s hope these last two don’t shut us out of the other one.”

“Alright, Jersey and Rocket, maintain your positions. Grizzly start moving in closer. Niner, you make your way over to him. Locus, keep us updated. Once we’re clear, drop down and meet us with the others. Siris and I will make our way to the rest of you,” Fox ordered.

Siris replied with a “copy that,” listening as the others gave similar replies, watching as Fox walked around him with her gun in her hands and started around the corner. He followed her closely, sticking to to the shadows as they made their way over to some storage crates near the other entrance to the warehouse where Grizzly and Niner had already gathered.

“The other two are on their way out,” Locus notified over comms, right as they reached cover.

“Alright, everyone hold their positions,” Fox said.

Siris leaned up against the storage crate, tapping a finger against his gun and staring at the ground as he waited for the all-clear.

Finally, Rocket’s voice came over comms, saying “alright. They just pulled out of the marina. We should be good.”

“Let’s move,” Fox said, turning the corner and making her way to the other entrance.

Siris waited for Grizzly and Niner to go after her first before he followed them, walking around and stopping in front of the doors. A moment later, Locus emerged from around the corner, his sniper rifle slung across his back, and came to join them in silence.

“Well, the door’s locked,” Grizzly observed, nodding at the padlock.

“I’ve got it,” Siris sighed, pulling a lock-picking kit out of his pocket and crouching in front of the lock.

“Color me surprised,” Fox said from behind him.

“You _know_ I was a bounty hunter,” Siris said as he selected a few picks and inserted them into the lock, “why is _that_ the thing that takes you off-guard?”

“You just seem so…” Fox trailed off.

“...Lawful good,” Grizzly finished.

Siris heard a _click_ and turned the picks with the lock, popping it open and pulling the chain off the door handles before gathering up his tools and turning back to Fox and Grizzly with a frown. “Lawful good?”

“Y’know, like the D-and-D alignment?” Grizzly replied with a shrug.

“Words are coming out of your mouth, but I don’t know what they mean,” Fox said, shaking her head. Then, “alright, let’s get these doors open.”

Siris packed in against the warehouse wall, waiting for the others to file in behind him before he flung one of the doors open and watched as Fox slipped past, gun raised. The others followed after, and he took the rear, scanning the marina behind them before he stepped inside the warehouse and shut the door behind him.

“Clear!” Fox called out, her voice echoing through the space.

Siris followed the sound of her voice with his eyes and found her standing up on the catwalk that overlooked the rest of the warehouse. He frowned, wondering how she got up there so fast, looking over when he heard Grizzly shout “clear!” from around the corner.

“Hey guys? I think you need to get a look at this!” Niner called out.

Above, Fox turned her head towards the sound of Niner’s voice, then leapt off the catwalk and landed in a roll, rising gracefully onto her feet.

Siris glanced to his left when he saw movement in the corner of his eye and found himself exchanging a look with Locus before they both started after Fox. As they rounded the corner, the smell hit Siris like a wall, and he stopped dead in his tracks, burying his nose in the crook of his elbow as he turned away. “Jesus _Christ,”_ he gasped.

“Well, we sure came to the right place,” Fox remarked, her voice tight.

 _“Yeah,”_ Niner said from where she was standing in front of an open door leading to what looked like some kind of closet.

Siris blinked a few times to clear the tears from his watery eyes and looked back at the door, picking out several large, rectangular, plastic boxes just inside. “Tell me those don’t have bodies in them,” he gritted out.

“They’re too small,” Grizzly said, walking up behind him and shaking his head.

Siris looked over as Fox holstered her gun and headed over to the door, saying “well, it’s a good thing I wore gloves.”

Siris leaned over to get a better look, and watched as she hit the light switch and crouched down in front of one of the crates, pausing suddenly and looking over her shoulder and saying “whoever’s the most squeamish can keep watch.”

“Dibs,” Niner said, raising a hand and walking past Siris and the others to keep an eye on the rest of the warehouse.

Siris let out a slow breath between his teeth and watched as Fox turned back to the crate she was in front of. Her hands hesitated over the latches for a moment, and she hissed out “this is going to be _so_ gross,” then she popped them up and opened the lid.

“Yep, that’s exactly what I was expecting to see,” Grizzly said, his voice thick with disgust.

Siris felt a cold spike of shock run through him and drain the blood from his face, and he turned away and clapped a hand over his mouth, swallowing hard to choke back the bile that threatened to climb up his throat. _What the fuck? What the_ **_fuck?!_ ** “Fox,” he rasped between his fingers, “you met Ziggy. Is he in there?”

“Not in this one,” he heard her reply. “I’m guessing you’re not up for trying to identify this guy, huh?”

Siris just shook his head, staring intently at the wall, trying to get his breathing back under control. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen bodies chopped up and shoved in boxes before. But knowing that he _knew_ some of them turned his blood to ice. A hand on his shoulder pulled him back to reality, and he sucked in a shaky breath and looked over to see Grizzly with a sympathetic expression on his face. “I’m fine,” he gritted out.

Grizzly just shook his head, and several feet to his right, Locus looked away towards Fox and said “I might know them.”

“Cool,” Fox replied, waving him in. “Just don’t touch anything. This is biohazard central right here.”

Siris watched Locus step into the small room with Fox and look over her shoulder into the crate. His eyes narrowed as Fox picked through the carnage, and he spoke up suddenly. “That arm belongs to Liam Robinson.”

“Robin? _Shit,”_ Siris gasped. Then he asked “is the tattoo there?”

Locus nodded.

Siris took a deep breath. “God damnit.”

“What did he do?” Fox asked.

“Weapons dealer,” Siris replied. “We were right. Abbott’s taking out his competition.”

“Hm,” Fox said, and popped a few more crates open, letting out a long sigh when she got to the last one and peered inside. “Well that’s a cologne I’ve smelled before.”

Siris peered past her and Locus, trying to get a better look. “Is it--?”

Locus caught his gaze and gave him a solemn nod.

Siris pulled away from Grizzly and walked over to the crate, staring down into it. “Oh Ziggy,” he sighed.

“I’m so sorry,” Fox said softly, looking up at him.

“It’s not--We weren’t--We weren’t close,” Siris said, running a hand through his hair. “I just didn’t think--”

“No one expects these kinds of things,” Fox said.

“Can you at least tell if this was done to him post-mortem?”

Fox looked back into the crate. “I mean...If I had a bit of time. But this isn’t what we came here for. We need to focus on figuring out where Abbott is getting his weapons from so we can avoid dealing with even _more_ bodies later.”

Siris closed his eyes and turned away. “Fair enough,” he said quietly. “Just promise me we’re not going to leave them here. Their families deserve closure.”

“You have my word,” Fox replied, shutting the crate and rising to her feet, pulling her gloves off.

Siris just watched as she brushed past, then looked over at Locus, who met his gaze and gave him a nod, then followed her. He turned back to the crate for a moment before hitting the light switch and stepping outside after them.

“That was...horrible,” Grizzly sighed as Siris walked past.

Siris didn’t look at him, and instead kept his eyes on Fox, watching as she stopped next to Niner and took a good look around the warehouse.

“Let’s spread out and look for weapons crates. Maybe we can find some info on who Abbott’s supplier is,” she said, turning back to the rest of her teammates.

“Copy that,” Grizzly said in a voice that was a little weaker than usual.

“Yes ma’am,” Niner replied.

Locus just nodded.

Siris couldn’t find it in himself to reply. Instead he just stared at the floor and tried to keep his hands from shaking. And when someone took one of them in their hands, he looked up with a start, blinking bewilderedly at Fox.

She held his gaze for a moment, eyes that seemed so much older than the rest of her searching his face, and then she softly said “come on. Let’s see what we can find,” and slowly led him forward.

Siris let her, keeping his eyes on the floor as she led him across the warehouse, only stopping when she did. He looked up to see a row of wooden crates in front of them, glancing over when Fox let go of his hand. He watched as she pulled a combat knife out of its holster on her belt and started leveraging the nails out of the corners of the crate. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

Fox froze, then looked back at him with a frown. “For?”

“Letting it get to me,” Siris replied.

Fox held his gaze a moment, then returned to what she was doing. “It happens. We can’t compartmentalize everything all at once. It takes time to process stuff like this.”

“I know, but…” Siris trailed off.

“You’re supposed to be the strong one, right?”

Siris blinked. “I--Well I--”

“I get it, you were the oldest one out of the little bounty hunting group you led with Locus and Felix,” Fox said, popping off another nail. “You’re used to being the one who has all his shit together. Who learned how to cope with the bad stuff. Who knew how to keep everyone else on track. And so now, when you come across something that throws that off, you don’t know how to deal with it.”

“Are you psychoanalyzing me?” Siris asked.

Fox shrugged, not looking at him as she removed another nail. “Not really. I don’t have to dig to deep with you, anyways. You kinda wear your heart on your sleeve. Locus does the same thing, but he acts like he doesn’t. It’s kind of funny.” She allowed a small smile to creep onto her face as she spoke, as if for emphasis, before growing serious again. “If it makes you feel any better, I know what you’re going through,” she added. “And I understand that you might need time to deal with it. So when we get back after tonight, you just tell me what you need, and I’ll do my best to deliver.”

Siris opened his mouth to reply, then shut it, staring at the floor for a moment before finally saying “thank you.”

Fox just nodded and pulled out the last nail, holstering her combat knife and sliding the top of the crate off.

Siris walked over and peered inside, noting the crate of ammunition that sat inside. “Well, shit,” he said.

“Fox, you need to see this,” Locus said suddenly over comms, causing Siris to flinch.

Fox took a deep breath and pulled the lid of the crate back on before rising to her feet and gesturing for Siris to follow her. She led him around towards the back of the shipping truck that was parked inside of the warehouse, over to where Locus, Grizzly and Niner were standing over another wooden crate. Grizzly had a flashlight focused on the contents of the crate, and he met both of their gazes when they approached, stepping back slightly but keeping the light trained to let Fox in.

She stepped up next to Locus, and Siris watched as her expression grew stony and cold. And he packed in next to Niner, making eye-contact with her for a second before he looked into the crate and saw what had drawn everyone’s attention.

Inside the box, painted in black lettering across the dark grey plastic surface of the weapons crates inside, were the words “Charon Industries.”

 

* * *

 

Locus watched as Fox stared intently into the crate in front of her, like it was a puzzle and she was trying to solve it. He was certain he could see her putting the pieces together, but didn’t have enough information on his own to tell what knowledge each one held. “Boss?” he asked, causing her to drop the fist she had pressed to her lips back to her side and look over at him.

“If these guys are getting their weapons from Charon, then this whole deal just got elevated to being a priority,” she said quietly.

He nodded. “What do you want to do?”

Fox looked back at the crate, narrowing her eyes. Then she put a hand to the comm in her ear and asked “Rocket, we’ve got Charon Industries weapons in the same warehouse as at least five bodies. If I put a report through to the police, will they handle it?”

“Uh,” Rocket’s voice replied. “Bodies? Like...like _dead_ bodies?”

“That is correct.”

“I mean...It’s a murder case. They _have_ to.”

“Hmm,” Fox said.

“What are you thinking?” Locus asked.

“I’m thinking Charon is selling weapons to people who go around murdering civilians. And if we can get those two things tied together in a court hearing, it’ll look _really_ bad on Hargrove’s record,” Fox said.

“The problem is, who’s going to bell the cat?” Grizzly asked.

Fox opened her mouth to reply, but cut off when Jersey’s voice came in over comms, saying “hey we’ve got a problem.”

“Talk to me,” Fox said quickly.

“Those two guys who left together are back in the marina. They’ll be pulling up to the warehouse in like, five minutes.”

“Fuck,” Fox hissed, then looked around at everyone before saying “everybody hide!”

 **_That’s_ ** _the plan?_ Locus thought, but decided not to question it. Instead, he quickly took cover around the corner and behind some boxes with Fox, keeping low to avoid being in anyone’s direct line of sight should they be discovered. He peered around the corner, trying to catch a glimpse of where the others wound up after they had all split up. He could see Siris crouching behind a stack of pallets with his gun drawn, but Grizzly and Niner were nowhere in sight.

“Jersey and Rocket should have noticed them coming back sooner,” Locus growled in a low voice.

“They might have used another way in. The marina has more than one exit,” Fox whispered back without looking at him.

Locus glanced over at her, then back towards the entrance they had come through, his stomach twisting when he remembered that they didn’t replace the lock Siris had picked. He opened his mouth to say something, but was cut off when one of the double doors swung open, and two men stepped through.

“Jesus, Gary, that’s the fastest I’ve ever seen you unlock those doors,” one of the men said.

“It...wasn’t locked, I don’t think,” Gary replied.

“Fuck, you _seriously_ didn’t lock it? _Again?!_ The boss is gonna have you for breakfast at this rate!”

“Look, Roland, it’s not my damn fault that they don’t buy better equipment,” Gary said coldly, shutting the doors behind him. “You want a lock that doesn’t just fall off a few seconds after you pop it shut, pay for it your own damn self!”

“Jeeze, they’re only like two bucks,” Roland said, walking past a row of boxes and equipment and turning the corner towards the room where Niner had discovered the bodies.

Gary just rolled his eyes and followed him, propping the door open and allowing Roland to walk through. A moment later, Locus heard the other man exclaim _“fuck_ that stinks!” followed by the sound of something heavy dragging across the floor. Locus peered around the corner and watched Roland pull one of the crates out of the closet and drag it into the hall before going back in to grab another one.

“They’re moving the bodies,” he murmured to Fox, who narrowed her eyes.

“Well, Rocket said the Boston PD would look into it if we gave them a call and paid the right people,” Fox suggested, perking up when Gary spoke again.

“So what are we gonna do with _this_ mess?” he asked.

“Same as we do with dropping off weapons shipments to those Insurrectionist schmucks,” Roland replied. “We stick em on a ship and ride em out to the middle of the Atlantic. Except instead of having a Pelican come and pick ‘em up, we sink the boat and pretend like we saw nothing!”

“Shit,” Fox hissed.

Locus didn’t say anything, but watched as the two men finished pushing the crates out of the closet and locked the door behind them. He waited until the men worked together to pick up one of the crates and carry it over to the truck parked at the other side of the warehouse before turning to Fox and saying “we can’t risk waiting any longer.”

“I agree,” Fox said, then over comms added “alright, here’s the plan. We’re going to get the drop on these two and find out what we know. Then we call the cops, have them run the investigation, and put a strike against Charon for illegal weapons dealing.”

“My question still stands,” Grizzly intoned. “Who’s belling the cat? Whoever does it is bound to take some serious fire from Abbott for it.”

Fox was silent for a beat, then replied “Siris, stay in cover. The current consensus is that Abbott is going after bounty hunters. You don’t need to be involved in this.” She then looked over at Locus and said “this one’s on you. I’m sure there’s _someone_ around here who knows you and Siris worked together. You’ve got the cred. If we can make them think you’ll be a threat, we can force them out in the open.”

“Understood,” Locus replied, a little relieved that she was keeping Siris out of harm’s way.

“Great. Let’s move and get these assholes in a position where they can answer some questions,” Fox growled, then pulled her bandana up over her face and nodded at him.

Locus did the same, then turned and started towards the truck, where the two men were loading in the last crate. Gun drawn, he slipped into cover behind the front of the vehicle, not glancing over when he felt Fox join him at his side. A movement on the catwalk above him alerted him to Grizzly’s presence as the other man packed in behind some boxes. At least one of them would have a vantage point if things went wrong, Locus thought, glancing back at Fox.

She gave him a nod, then pointed past him, then to herself before jerking her thumb back over her shoulder.

Locus nodded in understanding, and she gave him a thumbs up before turning and slipping around the corner to the side of the truck. Locus turned and began creeping along the other side, gun raised, listening to the conversation of the two men at the rear of the truck, eyes on their shadows to watch their movements. He just reached the tail of the vehicle when a hand gripped the edge of the truck’s right rear door and swung it shut to close the trunk, its owner freezing when he saw the gun Locus pointed in his face.

“Uh...h-hey Gary?” Roland stammered, palm still pressed against the trunk door.

Locus heard the sound of the other door bang shut, followed by a startled “oh _shit!”_ and figured that Fox had cornered the other one. “Step back. Hands on the back of your head,” he growled.

Roland swallowed hard, then slowly did as he was told, eyes never leaving the gun. “So who do you assholes work for?”

“Ourselves,” Fox replied, then said “on your knees. Both of you.”

Locus watched as Roland sank to the ground, then glanced over at Gary, who had done the same, eyes on Fox, who was standing over him with her gun trained.

“They’re fucking bounty hunters,” Gary hissed.

“The fuck? I thought our boss paid off the cops this month!?” Roland exclaimed.

“I’m sure they did,” Fox replied. “But we’re not working with the cops.”

“So what do you want?” Gary asked.

“Information,” Fox replied. “We want to know what Abbott has planned. We know about the weapons shipments. We know that Charon is one of your boss’ suppliers.”

“You’re going to tell us what he’s using those weapons for,” Locus growled.

Gary looked over at him and narrowed his eyes. “Or what?”

“Jesus Christ--Or we _kill_ you!” Fox exclaimed.

“Gary?” Roland asked, looking at his partner.

“I’d take that over what Abbott will do to us if he finds out we snitched,” Gary replied.

Fox made a motion with her head like she was rolling her eyes. _“Obviously._ So how about we work something out? I can get you two asshats on a ship to take you off-planet for a fresh start in exchange. Sound good?”

“Bull. _Shit,”_ Roland spat.

“Does she _sound_ like she’s joking?” Locus asked, taking a threatening step towards Roland.

Roland regarded him warily, then looked back over at Fox, then to Gary. “Dude?”

“My offer is the best chance you’ve got. You’re _already_ in deep shit for leaving this warehouse wide-open for people like us to sneak in. And we already know a fair amount of information about your little operation. You two are going to get fried anyways, you might as well prolong it while you can,” Fox explained.

Gary bit his lip and stared at the floor for a moment, then looked back up at Fox. “Fine,” he sighed. “Look, Abbott already has an intergalactic trading empire. It’s small, but it’s growing. And right now, he’s looking to take over Boston, because it’s basically the technology hub of North America, y’know? Not only that, but it’s got a military base that makes it a whole lot easier to smuggle goods on and off-planet.”

“The U.N.S.C. is involved?” Fox asked.

“I wouldn’t go that far, but a couple of folks looking to make more than the average Marine are in on the gig,” Roland replied.

Fox was silent for a moment, then asked “has he gone after other cities with military bases?”

“Well _yeah._ I mean, how else is he supposed to get shit to sell?” Gary sneered.

Locus watched as Fox leaned back slightly. “What’s Abbott’s endgame?” he asked, looking at the two men on the ground.

Roland shrugged. “Look, we’ve really only heard rumors. But for the record, Abbott isn’t really a bad guy.”

“And I’m a _fish,”_ Fox replied flatly.

Roland glanced over at her, then continued. “Abbott’s a businessman. He’s got some friends in high places--none of which I actually know of for _sure,_ other than Charon. But from what I’ve gathered through the grapevine, there are a lot of people with money who have taken a look at the whole state of things and decided they wanna make more jobs for people.”

Locus tilted his head slightly, a sour taste on his tongue. “By selling to Insurrectionists?”

“Hey, they’re good clients,” Gary snapped. “And we’re just following orders.”

“Neither of you have answered the question,” Fox pointed out, impatience creeping into her voice.

Roland sighed and rolled his eyes. “Look, the economy’s been in the shitter for years now. And the businesses who are giving us weapons to distribute under the table are ultimately gonna help people by bringing back that boom that got us all these technological advances and shit. They’re trying to _help_ people!”

“How?!” Fox exclaimed.

“By starting another war, obviously,” Gary replied.

And Locus felt something cold and sharp slip between his ribs at that. _“That’s_ the goal? Stimulate the economy by sacrificing thousands of _lives?”_

Gary shrugged. “Like I said, we’re just following orders.”

And Locus sucked in a breath between his teeth and took a step towards him, snarling “you--”

“What’s Abbott’s relationship with Charon?” Fox interrupted.

Locus stopped in his tracks, teeth gritted behind his bandana.

“Pretty good, I guess. We’ve been doing business with them for years,” Roland replied.

“And what’s his role in all of this?” Fox asked.

“Well, we’re all sort of like the middleman. I mean, starting a war is kind of a big deal, and no one wants to be known as the guy responsible for it,” Gary explained. “So we’re the ones taking credit for all the sales, even if we’re not the ones running the show.”

“Interesting,” Fox said, then over comms added “Griz, Niner, do me a solid and find something to tie these assholes up with. We’ve got a call to make.”

Locus looked over when he heard Grizzly on the catwalk above, following the other man with his eyes as he descended down the staircase and made his way over to them with a pair of zip-ties in his hand.

“Well that went smoother than I expected,” came Niner’s voice out of nowhere, and Locus looked over, startled, as she walked past him. He watched as her and Grizzly tied the two men up, then sighed and holstered his gun, replacing it with his phone.

“Can you two keep an eye on them for a moment?” Fox asked Grizzly and Niner.

“Sure,” Niner replied.

“Great,” Fox said, and Locus watched as she made her way over to him, waving at him to follow her as she walked past around to the side of the truck.

Locus trudged after her, frustration hardening every step he took until he reached her side near the front of the truck. “We can’t sit on this,” he growled.

“I know,” Fox said, crossing her arms and staring ahead at nothing for a moment. “I’m going to pull some strings and see what I can find.” She looked over at him and added “take a deep breath and put a call through to the cops. If we can get them to open an investigation, we may be able to buy ourselves some more time.”

“Abbott has friends in the police force,” Locus replied.

“And I’ve got enough money to help _end_ that friendship,” Fox said evenly. “This will work. I just need you to trust me. Think you can do that?”

Locus met her gaze, then decided he didn’t want to answer, turning away and dialing emergency services before he put the call through.

 

* * *

 

“What do you mean ‘another war?’ Was what he started here not _good_ enough for him?!” Kimball yelled.

Fox massaged her temples, squeezing her eyes shut against the glare of the holo-projector. “I don’t know. I’m just repeating back what I heard. But it adds up.”

Kimball just shook her head in disbelief, eyes on something out of view of the camera. “And you said you had the police looking into it?”

“I’ve already paid the right people off. Had a few nice phone conversations on the ride back here before I contacted you,” Fox explained.

“And you really think an investigation like this would help?” Kimball asked dubiously.

“I mean, I already explained to you _why_ Epsilon’s broadcast isn’t entirely useful,” Fox replied. “At this point, anything we can do to stack the odds against Hargrove is worth it.”

“Do you mind if I say something?”

Fox looked over her shoulder at Siris who had one arm folded across his chest, and his other hand raised. “Go ahead,” she said.

Siris gave her a grateful nod, then to Kimball said “I’ve been dealing with people like Abbott for a long time, and I have a pretty good idea of the sort of damage they’ve caused over the past five years. The southern hemisphere’s been in turmoil since the war, and a lot of that comes from people like Hargrove who are selling weapons through middlemen, who then deal with militia groups and the like. Not to mention the fact that we now how proof that Hargrove is selling weapons indirectly to Insurrectionists, which the U.N.S.C. has been dealing with for a while. Taking Abbott down will hurt Hargrove’s operations and make our lives a little easier, and may make him just a touch more desperate than he was before. And bringing this to light will make people _want_ to act, because everything that’s happening is affecting them directly.”

Fox raised an eyebrow at him, impressed, then turned back to Kimball, who had leaned forward slightly in her chair and appeared to be listening intently. “So? Do we have your blessing to take this motherfucker down?”

“Absolutely,” Kimball said with a nod. “But be careful. I don’t want this blowing back in your face. We’re dealing with enough losses as it is.”

Fox frowned. “Hey, speaking of which, you guys ever find that patrol that went missing a few days ago?”

Kimball shook her head and sighed. “Still no luck. I’m starting to think we may have a situation on our hands.”

“Yikes. Well...if you find something and Grey wants me to take a look at it, let her know I’m available,” Fox said.

“She’ll appreciate that,” Kimball replied. “Now if that’s everything, I have a patrol coming in that’s supposed to report to me.”

“Go meet them,” Fox said. “And good luck.”

“You too,” Kimball returned with a nod, then the screen cut to black.

Fox closed the window on the array above the holo-projector and turned back to the rest of her teammates. “Alright, so that’s that,” she breathed out.

“We’re going to need to be really fucking careful about all of this,” Jersey sighed, picking up the can of soda that was sitting between his feet and rising out of his chair. “Abbott isn’t someone to trifle with.”

“No shit,” Grizzly muttered.

“I can keep my ears to the ground, if you like,” Rocket suggested, hopping out of his seat and stretching.

“Just be careful about it, okay?” Fox replied, looking around at her teammates, allowing her gaze to settle on Locus for a moment before continuing. “The more damage we do, the more threatening our opponents become. Don’t forget that. As things progress, we’ll need to be smart about who we decide to make enemies out of. We’re trying to prevent an intergalactic war, not start another one.” She paused a moment, folding her arms behind her back, then added “now go home, clean up, get some sleep, come back refreshed. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

 

* * *

 

“Do you ever think about how pop music peaked at Lady Gaga’s ‘Bad Romance?”

“Do you ever shut up?”

Palomo looked over at Bitters from where he was riding shotgun next to him in the Warthog with his arms folded behind his head. “Do _you_ wanna know what you sound like?”

“No,” Bitters replied, keeping his eyes on the road and his grip tight on the Warthog’s steering wheel.

Palomo ignored him, cleared his throat, and in his best impression of the other man, said “hey everyone I’m Bitters, and I hate it when people are happy and also my last name is _super_ appropriate for my entire personality.”

“I _don’t_ sound like that.”

“Uh, _yeah_ you do.”

“I mean, you _are_ in a bit of a bad mood right now, Bitters,” Andersmith piped up from the back of the Warthog.

“John Elizabeth Andersmith, you stay out of this,” Bitters growled, reaching an arm back to thrust a finger in Andersmith’s face without taking his eyes off of the trail.

“Oh my god, what are you, our _dad?”_ Palomo snorted, sitting up and turning his head to watch the jungle fly past them.

“Maybe he’s just stressed out?” Andersmith suggested. “I mean, with Kimball pushing the patrols farther and farther, and the disappearance of those three soldiers--”

“It’s not that,” Bitters sighed, slowing the Warthog down as they took a sharp turn. “Well, not completely. I’m mostly concerned about where those three _went.”_

“Maybe they just ran off?” Palomo suggested, looking forward out through the windshield as Bitters took them down a steep slope. Through the trees, he could see the large river that wound through the jungle.

“I can’t think of any reason why someone would want to desert General Kimball, though,” Andersmith said.

“Well, tensions between us and The Federal Army of Chorus are still, like, kind of a thing,” Palomo reasoned. Of course, much of the friction had died down since Hargrove’s involvement had been revealed, but a lot of bitterness still remained between the two groups.

“I doubt that had anything to do with it either. We’ve learned to work together, for better or for worse,” Bitters spoke up, steering the Warthog down the trail and alongside the river. “I  mean, ever since we kicked Charon’s ass the first time, things have been taking a turn for the better. Hell, Kimball is reaching out across the planet to colonist settlement leaders to discuss a location for New Armonia!”

Palomo stared at him in surprise. “Who are you and what did you do to Bitters?”

“The fuck’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

“I dunno. I’m just not used to hearing you be so positive, is all.”

Bitters made a sound like a dog trying to clear its throat and turned his gaze to the river beside them. “All I’m saying is that there aren’t any _real_ reasons for them to jump ship. Unless they’re like, sleeper agents, which wouldn’t make sense, since they would have dipped out with the rest of the pirates if they--”

Palomo blinked when Bitters cut off suddenly, and watched as the other man pumped the Warthog’s brakes, slowing the vehicle as he leaned forward to peer over the steering wheel. “Bitters, what--”

“Shut up,” Bitters said, stepping down on the brakes suddenly and causing the still-slowing Warthog to jerk to a halt.

“Dude, what--?!”

Bitters just parked the Warthog and grabbed his gun off of the floor of the vehicle before hopping out and shouting over his shoulder “follow me!” as he started running downstream.

Palomo stared after him for a second, then turned and exchanged a bewildered look with Andersmith, before the two of them leapt out of the vehicle and high-tailed it after Bitters.

“Bitters, what the fuck?!” Palomo exclaimed as he chased him, feeling his feet sink into the mud as he and Andersmith drew closer to the water. The two had nearly reached Bitters, when the other man threw his gun down on the ground and charged into the river.

“Bitters, _wait!”_ Andersmith yelled, skidding to a stop beside Palomo when he reached the water’s edge.

“Get a cable out of the Warthog!” Bitters shouted back, but stopped in his tracks as the water reached knee-level.

Palomo stood on the riverbank wringing his hands for a moment, then turned and bolted back to the Warthog, grabbing a cable out of the back of it before returning to the water’s edge. “I got it!” he exclaimed, holding one end of it up for Bitters to see.

“Throw it to me!” Bitters replied, turning and holding out both hands to catch it.

Palomo wrapped one end around his left arm, then threw the rest of the loop upstream of Bitters, who turned and grabbed it out of the water as it began to float past him. “Now what?!” Palomo asked.

“When I tug twice on the cable, you and Smith are gonna pull me in, okay?” Bitters called back.

“Got it!” Andersmith replied.

“What the fuck is going on?” Palomo muttered, watching as Bitters tied the rope around his waist, then waded out into the deeper water towards a natural dam of large branches and sticks that were trapped by the current. As Palomo peered at them, he noticed something bright white that was submerged under the dam at the bottom of the river. And as he watched, Bitters approached it and sunk under the water, kicking up silt that clouded the river, making it impossible for Palomo to see what was going on. He exchanged a look with Andersmith, who simply shrugged, and was about to open his mouth when he felt a tug against the cable wrapped around his arm. “He wants us to pull him back up!” he exclaimed, taken off guard.

“I’ll help!” Andersmith offered, grabbing onto the cable in front of Palomo and sinking his heels into the mud.

The two heaved backwards, dragging Bitters inch by inch out of the water until the other man’s head and shoulders broke the surface and his feet were able to find purchase to help Palomo and Andersmith get him to shore more easily.

It wasn’t until the water was at Bitters’ waist-level that Palomo was able to pick another shape through the kicked up silt. “What the fuck _is_ that?” he asked.

 _“Who,”_ Bitters corrected, waving him and Palomo aside and putting his back to them as he turned to heave what he had brought to the surface onto the shore.

Palomo and Andersmith parted, looking on in horror as Bitters dragged his find up away from the riverbank and onto the grass, trailing mud and river kelp behind him, and set it down.

Swallowing hard, Palomo fumbled with getting the cable off of his arm, unable to take his eyes off of the figure laying on the grass. “That’s…”

“A...body…” Andersmith finished, sounding equally as horrified as Palomo felt.

“Yeah,” Bitters sighed, flicking river kelp off of his shoulder before crouching down next to the corpse and wiping some of the muck off of its helmet.

“Th-that’s Fed armor,” Palomo choked out, doing all he could muster to keep his churning stomach from emptying its contents when he saw the state of the body.

“What were the names of the people that went missing?” Andersmith asked quietly.

“Louise, Mel, and Hodges,” Bitters replied, holding up a finger on one hand for each name he listed off. “I didn’t really know any of them--”

“Mel,” Palomo rasped. “Mel had white and grey Fed armor.”

“Shit,” Bitters breathed.

“What...what _did_ that to him?” Andersmith asked, nodding at Mel’s midsection.

 _Great question. Not sure I want an answer,_ Palomo thought, his eyes locked on the hole that had been punched clean through the corpse. “Um...maybe like...a fish?”

Bitters shook his head and pointed to the busted kevlar around the wound. “Undersuit’s been melted straight into the hole. Whatever did this was _hot.”_

“A Mantis, maybe?” Andersmith asked, and Palomo couldn’t remember a time when the other man’s voice had sounded so small.

“I-I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Mantis fire anything that could do something like that,” Palomo replied.

“Yeah,” Bitters agreed, nodding slightly, “me neither.” He fell silent for a moment, then looked back over his shoulder at the Warthog. “Either way, we’re not going to solve anything here. Grey’s better for this stuff than we are, and she’s not out here. Let’s...let’s bring him back so she can have a look at him, yeah?”

Palomo nodded numbly, and looked on as Bitters recruited Andersmith to help him carry the corpse back to the Warthog to stow in the back. Tearing his eyes away, he took a few deep breaths, choking down the hot bile that had begun to crawl up his throat. Then he stooped down and picked up the cable, bunching it up with shaky hands and tucking it under his arm before he opened a line over comms to make a report.

 

* * *

 

“You know, I’d thought I’d seen just about everything,” Grey said as she finished recording her observations on the diagram on her datapad. “But _this_ is definitely a new one for the books.”

“What do you think did that to him?” Doc asked, peering down at Mel’s corpse laid out on the autopsy table in front of him.

“Well, Bitters said he suspected a heat source, and I have to agree with him on that based solely on observation,” Grey replied. “I think we can rule out any sort of particle beam weapon, as there are none I can think of that would punch a hole the size of a grapefruit through a person upon impact.”

“What about a Mantis?”

“According to all reports I’ve seen, there aren’t any hostile ones left,” Grey said, finishing up with her datapad and looking over at Doc.

“So then...what happens now?”

Grey looked down at the corpse, frowning slightly. “Well, we’ll have to run some tissue samples to determine the exact cause of that hole. I’d also like to do a full internal autopsy to see if we can find anything else that might point us in the right direction. Worse comes to worse, we may have to give Fox a call and see what she thinks of it.”

“Why?” Doc asked, and something in his tone hinted to Grey that he knew she was implying more than she was saying.

“Well, look at the hole in his chest,” Grey replied, gesturing to the corpse. “The only time I’ve ever seen a heat-based weapon make as clean a cut as this is when I examined some of the pirates that Fox’s shield cut through.”

Doc’s eyes grew wide. “You think she had something to do with this?”

“Of course not!” Grey scoffed. “I’m simply stating that perhaps someone else figured out how to make a similar technology to that shield.” She then shook her head. “That, or it’s simply a coincidence, and whoever killed our friend here had a _very_ lucky shot. Either way, let’s run some tests before we bother Fox with this, so we know what we’re dealing with before we contact her.”

“Sounds good,” Doc said. “I’ll grab a sample kit for you.”

Grey simply nodded, staring down at the hole in Mel’s chest with a frown on her face. The walls of the hole were completely smooth, like they’d been carved out intentionally. The patrol had only been missing for a few days, which meant that even with the factor of decomposition, the damage wasn’t nearly as bad as it could be, and the river the body had been found in was practically devoid of life due to the war.

How long ago had Fox made her shield? It occurred to Grey that she had never specified. But one thing she knew for certain was that plasma beams didn’t do damage like this, but hard light did, and the only real contact Fox had on Nalome had been Charon. And that knowledge was allowing a picture to form in Grey’s mind that she wasn’t sure she liked.

 

* * *

 

“I understand your concerns but until we’re _certain_ that all of Charon’s influence has been removed from the planet, we _have_ to halt rebuilding efforts. We’ve lost so much already, we don’t need to give these people an easy target by trying to reconstruct a city,” Kimball sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose and squeezing her eyes shut. Calling a meeting with all of the settlement leaders to put off reconstruction efforts was the _last_ thing she wanted to do today, but with the discovery of one of her men’s mutilated corpses, she couldn’t risk setting the colony up for another failure.

“We’ll want updates as this progresses,” one of the settlement leaders said, prompting Kimball to look over at the woman on her screen who had spoken.

“Of course,” Kimball replied. “The minute we’re able to confirm that _whatever_ threat we’re dealing with has passed, you’ll hear from me.”

The other settlement leaders on the call seemed satisfied by the promise, and one of them, an older man with a graying beard and a scar on his forehead spoke up. “What will you do if it turns out to be Charon?”

“Then I’ll make sure the team on Earth turns up the heat to draw their fire away from us,” Kimball replied, feeling a headache beginning to form behind her eyes.

“I see,” the man said. “Listen, you know many of us aren’t happy about all of this. Our people are looking to rebuild after everything we’ve lost, but we understand it’s a hard call. And I think we can all agree that, at this point, we trust your judgement to do what’s best for all of us.”

“Thank you,” Kimball sighed, wishing the declaration were enough to quell the anxiety knotting up her chest. “I’ll contact you as soon as we learn anything. For now, focus on gathering supplies, and prep your people for a possible evacuation. I want you ready for the worst, even if it never comes.”

“Understood,” another settlement leader spoke up.

“Good,” Kimball said with a nod. “Stay vigilant and be ready. General Kimball out.” With that, she hit the button to end the call, then slouched in her chair and buried her face in her hands with a groan. She stayed there for a moment, anger bubbling inside of her. They were so _close,_ yet everytime they seemed to pull ahead, their target moved further out of reach! Kimball let her hands drop and glared at the mug full of pencils on her desk like it was the sole proprietor of all her frustrations. She chewed her lip for a moment, letting her anger roil like a storm inside of her for a moment before she lunged forward and grabbed a pencil out of the mug, gripping it in both hands and snapping it in half, just to feel it break, then threw the two pieces forcefully into the trashcan beside her desk before jumping to her feet, grabbing her helmet, and storming out of her office.

It wasn’t until she was halfway across headquarters that an objective finally formed in her mind. _That sniper Locus dragged back. He ratted out Charon to us before. He might know something about what happened to that soldier too. Find him. Make him talk. Get answers. The sooner this is over, the sooner we can start_ **_living_ ** _again,_ she told herself, stomping over to the elevator at the end of the hall and punching the button to take her to the sublevels.

She stood waiting for a few moments, watching the floor counter above the door descend, only being pulled back to the world by the sound of footsteps behind her. She let out a long sigh, preparing herself for the inevitable as the footsteps approached and stopped right beside her. Out of the corner of her eye, Kimball could make out dark grey armor with yellow accents. Under her helmet, Kimball squeezed her eyes shut, hoping that Wash would take the memo her silence held and not try to start a conversation.

“Where are you headed?” Wash asked after a moment.

 _No such luck, then,_ Kimball thought irately. “Holding cells. I’m planning to speak to the sniper Locus brought back about that soldier that was found dead.”

Wash nodded. “Can I join you?”

Kimball pulled a face under her helmet, but said “fine,” looking on as the elevator doors opened with a chime. She stepped in and Wash followed, moving out of the way so she could push the button to take them to the holding cells.

Wash waited until the doors slid shut before asking “is something wrong?”

Kimball let out a long, frustrated sigh and said “I called off reconstruction efforts until we know what we’re dealing with.”

Wash was silent for a moment, then said “I see. That must have been hard.

Kimball looked away. “I’m only doing what I have to do but…” She balled her hands into fists at her sides, and when she spoke again, she didn’t care that her frustration had crept into her voice. “I feel like everyone thinks I’m crazy. And what’s worse is that I’m starting to agree with them! I just feel so _paranoid!_ Like this-- there’s no way that what happened to that soldier was done by an animal, or any other force of nature! Grey ruled both of those things out! But she said she needs to run tests to make sure it didn’t come from a weapon. And if it did, what am I supposed to do? Everyone thinks that we drove Charon off of this planet during that last fight, but what if we’re wrong?! What do I tell my people?! We’re all so tired of this goddamned war, I don’t know if any of us will last through another one!” Feeling her anger drain away into exhaustion, Kimball sighed and stared at the floor, ashamed at her outburst. “I just...I feel like there’s more to what’s going on than we’re seeing. There’s no way that what happened was done by a few ordinary pirates. I can just feel it. But I can’t do anything based on gut feeling alone. We _have_ to have proof.”

Wash was silent for a while, and Kimball couldn’t bring herself to look at him, feeling ridiculous for piling on all of her problems onto him. But when he spoke up, she looked over at him in surprise. “I agree with you,” he said. “None of this is normal. I talked to Palomo, Bitters, and Andersmith myself after they were debriefed. Everything they described sounds like some sort of new threat we need to prepare for. I just wish we had more information.”

Kimball nodded silently, forcing herself to breathe evenly, then noted with a frown that Wash had his hand over the ‘stop’ button on the elevator panel. “Why are you doing that?”

Wash looked down at his hand, then back at her and said “oh, uh, I figured you wouldn’t want anyone but me to hear what you had to say.”

“I see. Thank you,” Kimball said, then turned and faced the doors. She was silent for a moment, and upon realizing that the elevator wasn’t moving, added “you can let go of the button now, Wash.”

“Right. Sorry,” Wash said, pulling his hand away.

Kimball said nothing, but kept her eyes on the doors as the elevator began to move again, descending into the sublevels of the headquarters and coming to a stop at their destination. When the doors slid open, Kimball stepped out and started immediately for Pier’s cell, not slowing when she heard Wash hurry to keep up with her. She rounded the corner, thinking of what she wanted to ask Pier, before she reached his cell and came to a halt.

Pier was seated on his cot with a book in his hands, wearing a white T-shirt, grey pants, and boots when Kimball reached his cell. He looked up with surprise when he saw her, and dog-eared the page he was on before hopping off the cot and walking over to the glass wall that separated him from the rest of the world. “Well, well. What are _you_ doing in this neck of the woods?” he asked, shoving his hands in his pockets.

Kimball frowned behind her helmet, realizing that this was the first time she’d seen him out of armor before. “I have some questions for you.”

“Figured,” Pier replied, eyeing Wash. “Lemme guess, you’re the good cop?”

“What?” Wash asked.

“Yeah, y’know? She’s bad cop, you’re good cop. Right?”

Kimball rolled her eyes. “Just-- look, we had an incident where three of my men disappeared while on patrol a few days ago, and one of them just turned up dead with a hole through his chest.”

“Oh yeah, I heard about that from the guards,” Pier mused, scratching his chin. “So where do I come into all of this?”

“I need to know if you know anything about any other groups of space pirates that Charon may have sent down,” Kimball told him.

Pier frowned. “I can’t say I’ve heard anything like that. As far as I know, we were the only group. I guess Control figured we’d be enough, since there were so many of us. Obviously they were wrong. But I feel like if they had sent down another group, they’d’ve let us know, y’know? So to prevent friendly fire and all that.”

Kimball looked over at Wash, who shrugged. “What he’s saying makes sense.”

“Good, ‘cause it’s the truth,” Pier replied, glancing over at him. He then turned to Kimball and asked “so what can you tell me about the body?”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, you come down here looking for answers, but you don’t give me any information that might help me get some to you,” Pier said, then added “look, my pirating days are _over._ You guys beat me fair and square, and honestly? Shit just isn’t worth it. Especially not after seeing what those two black-suited motherfuckers could do. I’m not interested in tangling with them again, so that puts me on your side, you feel me?”

“So if I give you details, you’re willing to cooperate and help us?” Kimball asked.

“Yeah, I just said that,” Pier replied. “So hit me with the deets.”

Kimball sighed and exchanged a glance with Wash before saying “the body was found in the river with a hole through its chest. According to Doctor Grey, the walls of the hole were cauterized and incredibly smooth, and she believes it was caused by some sort of heat-based weapon--what?” Kimball broke off when she noticed the face that Pier pulled.

“Someone burned a hole through the guy?” Pier asked, cringing.

“Yes?”

“Gross,” Pier said, swiping a wrist across his mouth before he took a seat cross-legged on the floor. “So was the body found before or after the waterfall?”

“I--” Kimball frowned and looked over at Wash, who seemed to be listening to Pier intently. “After. Downstream in the valley. Why?”

Pier held up a finger and said “I got one more, then I’ll answer you. Where did their particular patrol route take them?”

Kimball blinked, thinking hard. “Near the top of the mountain. By...by the waterfall. The highest point of their patrol route was only a few clicks away from it.”

Pier scratched his head. “You sent people up to check that route?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Did they know they were looking for burn marks?”

“I...don’t think so,” Kimball said. “But they should have noticed them if there were any.”

“Assuming the attack happened _on_ the trail,” Pier added. “Your people ever spread out into the bush to look for anything unusual?”

“Well, in the early part of the search, yes, but no one reported anything unusual,” Kimball said, frowning and looking over at Wash.

“Any signs of an attack might have blended in with damage from previous fights,” Wash suggested.

“Bumblebee’s got a point,” Pier said, pointing at Wash.

“Don’t call me that,” Wash said flatly.

“Anyways, it’s one thing to look at,” Kimball said, ignoring the exchange. “I’m more interested in what you know about any heat-based weaponry that may have been in development around the time you were hired. Or just...any other information you can provide at all, at this point.”

Pier pulled a face. “Well...I might have something for you, but I don’t know if it ties into any of what you’re dealing with currently.” He laced his fingers together and dropped his hands into his lap, sitting up straight. “It’s more hearsay, really. But one of the guys who was actually on _The Staff of Charon_ before we headed here mentioned that there was some _real_ Doctor Frankenstein-esque shit going down on that ship.”

Kimball tilted her head in interest. “Such as?”

Pier shrugged. “Look, I couldn’t get much else out of the guy, but he seemed to imply something about human experiments. That’s all I can tell you, though.”

Under her helmet, Kimball pulled a disgusted face. “Human experiments?”

“Yeah, something to do with some guy named Doctor Marlowe,” Pier replied.

And Kimball froze. She recognized that name. Fox had brought it up when Emblem had been breached. From what Kimball had gathered from that conversation, the man was a threat. And if he was involved, she _needed_ to know what Fox knew. “Is that all?” she asked.

Pier rose to his feet, groaning slightly with the effort, placing a hand on his lower back and cringing slightly before replying “yeah, that’s all I’ve got.”

“Very well, thank you for your cooperation,” Kimball said, then nodded at Wash and turned on her heel, heading back the way they had come.

“I didn’t like the sound of any of that,” Wash remarked after he had fallen into pace beside her.

“Neither did I,” Kimball said, heading back up the walkway towards the elevator. “I’ll have to get word out to all the patrols to keep an eye out for what Pier mentioned.”

“I was actually about to head out on patrol with the rest of Blue Team myself,” Wash replied. “We can trade out with another patrol to canvas the area that those three soldiers disappeared from.”

Kimball looked over at Wash. “Perfect,” she said, stopping in front of the elevator and pushing the button, stepping inside when the doors slid open. “Bring a Warthog with you in case you find anything. And bring along a few of your lieutenants so you can show them what we’re looking for.”

“Will do,” Wash said, hitting the button to take them back to the main level.

Kimball nodded, then sighed and looked away, staring at the wall of the elevator like it was somehow interesting to her. This was a lot to take in, and it wasn’t like she had the time to sit around and absorb all of it. Though with Wash taking the initiative, and Grey leading the examination of the body that had been brought back to figure out what they were _dealing_ with, she felt a little better about all of it.

The elevator doors slid open with a chime and she looked on as Wash stepped out before following him out into the hallway. When he turned to face her, she said “I want you to keep me updated with everything you find, understand?”

Wash nodded. “I will,” he said, then as an afterthought, added “hang in there.”

Kimball just closed her eyes and replied, almost automatically, “you too.” When she opened her eyes again, Wash was halfway down the hall, walking away from her, and she watched as he turned the corner and disappeared from view. Frowning, the stared at the floor for a moment, feeling very much between a rock and a hard place. _Go talk to Grey,_ she urged herself. _She always helps. And you can get an update on her findings while you’re down there. Standing around gets you nothing._

Biting her lip, Kimball turned and headed down the hall towards the medical wing, figuring she may as well find _some_ way to help. If she couldn’t go out and hunt down whoever killed her men herself, she would do whatever else she could to help others do it for her.

 

* * *

 

“Ninety-nine Grifballs lined up on the field!

Ninety-nine Grifballs lined up!

Shoot a goal,

Up the death toll!

Ninety-eight Grifballs lined up on the field!”

Tucker did his best to block out the sound of Matthews’ singing as they trudged up the trail. He’d been wailing lyrics like a dying musical cat all afternoon, and Tucker was beginning to think that if he didn’t shut up soon, him and Wash would be dragging _another_ dead body back to camp.

It didn’t help that Wash had parked the Warthog a mile and a half back, insisting that they’d be more likely to find something on foot. Now they were dragging themselves uphill in blistering jungle heat and humidity that continuously fogged up Tucker’s visor, while lugging around heavy guns and tripping over tree roots, all so they could look for evidence that he was _certain_ wasn’t there. The only thing they were missing was a thunderstorm to make the trek even harder, but Tucker wasn’t about to wish for something he didn’t want.

“How much farther?” he called up to Wash, who was leading the group.

“Until we reach the waterfall,” Wash replied over his shoulder.

“Oooh! Are we gonna go swimming?” Caboose asked.

“No, Caboose,” Tucker replied flatly.

“Awww.”

“Y’know,” McAllister spoke up from the rear, “I’m starting to wish Jensen had made it out with us.”

“Why’s that?” Matthews asked, finally taking a break from singing.

“The new episode of this show we both watch came out and I have _literally_ no one to talk to about it,” McAllister replied mournfully.

“I’m more concerned that she’s not going to know what she’s looking for when she goes on later patrols,” Wash spoke up without looking back at her.

“Aw, I’m sure she heard everything from Palomo. They _are_ dating, you know!” McAllister replied.

“Don’t remind me,” Tucker said, turning his attention forward. He was silent for a moment, then asked “so Wash, you got any theories about what happened to the rest of that missing patrol?”

“Well…” Wash began with a sigh, slowing his pace a little to allow Tucker to catch up with him. “You already heard about what Pier told Kimball and I, about Charon’s possible involvement.”

“Well yeah, and we all heard about what happened to...Mel…” Tucker trailed off, focusing on his feet as he wandered through the brush after Wash.

“Hey, maybe it was an accident?” Matthews suggested. “I mean, bad shit tends to happen all the time around here.”

“Yeah, like that one time Tucker got _stabbed!”_ Caboose added.

“Yeah that wasn’t a fucking accident, Caboose. Felix was _trying_ to kill me,” Tucker replied.

“Yeah, but he _didn’t._ So it was an accident!” Caboose said, sounding satisfied with himself.

“As in, he accidentally _didn’t_ murder Captain Tucker,” McAllister stated, sounding amused.

“Can we focus on the topic please?” Tucker asked in a strained voice.

McAllister shrugged, then said “I think it might have been murder.”

“Well yeah, _obviously,”_ Tucker replied.

“Yeah, yeah,” McAllister said, waving aside his comment before continuing. “But really, think about it. Mel turns up dead with an injury that was _obviously_ made with some kind of weapon, and Hodges and Louise are _nowhere_ to be found. It seems pretty apparent what happened here.”

Tucker turned to face her, walking backwards. “No fucking way! There’s no way Hodges would try to kill one of his own teammates! He’s _way_ too loyal to Kimball for that. I’d know. I worked with the guy.”

“Oh yeah? What about Louise?”

“ I doubt that _either_ of them had a hand in what happened to Mel, lieutenant,” Wash spoke up from the front in a tone that suggested he wasn’t happy with the direction the conversation was headed. _“None_ of us benefit from killing one another.”

“Yeah, besides, Volleyball, we’re all friends anyways!” Caboose added.

“You’re the boss,” McAllister said to Wash.

Tucker watched her a moment before turning around to walk forward again, looking over when he began to hear running water to his left. It sounded like they were close.

“Alright, we’ve reached the river,” Wash announced, slowing his pace a little and glancing back over his shoulder at the others. “Let’s get close to it and follow it up to the waterfall. If we don’t find anything, we’ll keep going and check the trail near the top of the mountain, then comb the river again on the way back down.”

“Works for me,” Tucker replied with a nod, listening as the others spoke up in agreement.

Wash nodded, then led them through the bushes towards the riverbank.

Tucker followed immediately behind him, ducking under a group of branches before he reached where Wash was standing. The two of them waited in silence for a moment as the others joined them before Wash turned and started up the river.

Tucker trudged along behind him, eyes on the water to his left, noting the eerie silence of their surroundings. Back on Earth, a place like this would have been filled with bird calls and the buzzing of insects and the movement of ground-dwelling animals. But here, there was nothing, and it only added to the feeling of worry that was slowly building in Tucker’s chest. It wasn’t until he ran straight into Wash that he was suddenly pulled out of his own head. “Whoah, shit!” he exclaimed, stumbling back.

Wash, who had managed to remain upright, steadied his balance and looked back. Tucker didn’t have to see his face to picture the irate expression he was probably wearing, and he braced himself for a mini-lecture. However, Wash simply looked back the way he had been facing before, upriver towards some rapids. “There’s something up there,” he said.

Tucker blinked, then glanced over his shoulder to make sure the rest of their team was with them before looking back at Wash and asking “what is it?”

“We’ll find out in a second,” Wash replied. “Matthews, McAllister, I want you flanking us. Tucker, you’re with me. Caboose, watch our backs.”

“Okay!” Caboose exclaimed.

Tucker watched as McAllister and Matthews drew their weapons and spread out a little ways away from them. McAllister crept into the brush on their right, and Matthews quickly splashed across the knee-deep water to the opposite river bank. Looking ahead, Tucker noticed that Wash had drawn his own weapon, and he instinctively did the same, pulling his rifle off his back and holding it tightly in both hands. “Wash?” he asked. “We good?”

Wash nodded. “Let’s move. Slowly,” he said, then started to creep forward, knees bent.

Tucker followed him, listening to the sound of Caboose’s footsteps behind them as they approached the rapids. As they got closer, Tucker could make out something trapped in the rocks that the rapids flowed over. And as they got even closer, a slight breeze swept through the canopy above them, and the sunlight that filtered through the branches glinted off of part of something silvery in the water.

“Son of a bitch,” Wash muttered, stopping in front of the thing trapped in the rocks. “That’s a visor.”

And Tucker felt his stomach drop into his knee caps. “You’re sure?” he asked, walking to the very edge of the water and peering into the middle of the river. Even though the distortion caused by the rapidly flowing water, Tucker could distinguish a helmet. And judging by the coloration of what he had thought were just rocks, it was attached to a body. A human body. “Fuck, how are we gonna get that out of there?” he asked, looking over at Wash.

“Oh! Oh! I can help!” Caboose exclaimed, jumping up and down. Then he paused and seemed to think. “Though it’ll be hard to see your backs if I go in the water.”

Behind him, Tucker heard Wash suck a breath in between his teeth, and wished he could be amused at how literally Caboose had taken his orders.

“Caboose, that’s fine--” Wash started to say, but cut off when Caboose charged into the river, his footsteps splashing water everywhere.

Tucker watched as Caboose slung Freckles onto his back, then reached into the water and pulled the limp form of a soldier out of the river and into his arms. Caboose carried the body back to shore, stepping up onto the bank and laying the corpse down on the ground in front of Wash and Tucker.

“Well. Shit,” Tucker sighed.

“What?” McAllister asked, coming up from behind them and stopping next to Tucker. She gazed down at the corpse for a moment in silence, then, in a quiet voice said “well now I just feel like an asshole.”

“Is he dead?” Matthews called from across the river.

“Yeah!” Tucker called back.

“Who is it?”

“Hodges!” McAllister replied, then turned away and shook her head. “Poor guy.”

Tucker watched as Wash crouched down next to the body, peering over the wounds that covered it. The other man was silent for a moment, then slowly lifted Hodges’ corpse onto its side so he could see the back. Something about the way Wash held the body like that, staring at Hodges’ back, made Tucker feel uneasy, and he asked “what’s wrong?”

“The holes on the front of him run right through the back,” Wash replied grimly.

Tucker sucked in a shaky breath. “Holy shit. What _did_ that?”

“I don’t know, but I think we can rule out any sort of animal or other nature-related cause,” Wash replied, setting the body back down before reaching up to rub the back of his neck. He sighed, staring out across the river at nothing in particular, then looked up at Tucker and said “I’m gonna call this in.” Then he stood and walked a little ways upriver, one hand pressed to the side of his helmet.

Tucker stared after him for a moment, looking back when he heard Caboose speak up.

“Do you think it hurt?” Caboose asked.

“I…” Tucker turned his gaze to the corpse on the ground. “I hope not.”

“Oh,” Caboose said quietly. “Yeah, me too.”

“Me three,” McAllister added.

The three of them stood in silence for a moment, listening to the slight wind move the trees overhead and the babble of the river beside them, and Tucker wished he could think of something helpful to say. He was cut off from his thoughts however when Matthews’ voice came to them over comms, saying “hey, I think I see something!”

Tucker looked across the river towards where Matthews was standing. The other man was looking upriver, his gun lowered. He stood there for a moment, then suddenly slung his weapon onto his back and began running up the incline.

“Whoah, hey! Wait!” Tucker called out after him over comms.

“Matthews, _no!_ We don’t know what’s out there!” McAllister shouted off-comms, getting Wash’s attention.

“Caboose, Volleyball, you two stay here,” Tucker instructed, then splashed across the river and charged up the hill after Matthews. He had made it about halfway to where Matthews had stopped near a bend in the river when Wash caught up to him.

“What’s happening?” Wash asked.

“Matthews saw something,” Tucker replied, nodding at the man in mention, who had noticed them and was waving them over.

“Oh boy,” Wash said, and the two of them climbed the rest of the hill up to where Matthews was standing, peering into the water.

Tucker stepped up beside Matthews, following the younger man’s gaze, and he felt his shoulders sink. Protruding from a mass of branches and mud jammed into the corner of the riverbend was an arm. Its wrist was limp, and there was a long, clean cut through the stark white bracer, like someone had tried slicing it open.

“Son of a bitch,” Wash spat, then holstered his gun, waded out to the entanglement, and started to dig.

Tucker watched him for a moment, then holstered his own weapon and trudged through the mud to join him, pulling away branches and digging at the mud until the body that had been trapped underneath began to come loose.

“Okay, all together now,” Wash spoke up, panting. “I’m gonna grab his legs. You grab his shoulders. We’re gonna drag him into the water to clean him off, then get him to shore. Got it?”

Tucker nodded, clearing away some mud so he could get his wrists under the corpse’s armpits.

Wash grabbed both legs, and said “alright, three...two...one!” He lifted the corpse’s legs and side-stepped back into the current.

Tucker tried to do the same, but the minute he began pulling the upper half of the body into the water, he noticed something terribly wrong. “Wash! Wait wait _stop!”_ Wash froze, and Tucker noted that his efforts had gotten most of the body’s lower half into the water.

“What’s wrong?” Wash asked.

“There’s something wrong with his head. Hold on!” Tucker replied, and reached into the water and began splashing it onto where the corpse’s head was stuck. After loosening the mud a little bit, he was able to wipe it away, and when he finally got a clear picture at exactly what was wrong, he felt like he was going to be sick. “Fuck. _Fuck,_ Wash. His head…”

“Can we pull him out?” Wash asked.

“Uh, I think so. Yeah,” Tucker replied, then resumed the grip he’d had before, and with Wash’s help, the two of them lifted the corpse out of the mud, dipped it in the water, then carried it to shore.

They set it down at Matthews’ feet, and all it took was for the younger man to get a real good look at the damage before he gasped out “oh god,” and darted into the bushes.

Tucker listened to the sound of Matthews getting sick as he stared down at the nearly decapitated corpse at his feet. “Wash?” he asked, looking over at his teammate.

Wash just shook his head. “The cut on his stomach and his bracer are just too clean,” he muttered.

“What...what do you think happened?” Tucker asked.

Wash looked over at him. “Mel had a hole blown through his chest. Hodges was impaled in multiple places all over his body. And Louise? He’s got two incredibly clean cuts on his stomach and arm, and his head’s been nearly torn off.” He turned his gaze back to the body and continued. “I don’t think we’re looking at a _what_ anymore. I think we’re looking at a _who.”_

Tucker stared. “Yeah, but _who_ the fuck could do something like this?”

“I don’t know,” Wash admitted. “But I don’t know of any weapons that could do this kind of damage, human or alien, and I’m starting to think that maybe Pier told Kimball and I more than he thought he did.”

 

* * *

 

 _The Staff of Charon_ had arrived at Io twenty-four hours ago, and ever since then, Hargrove had been fighting a headache. That headache only got worse when he received word of a police investigation of his company as a result of one of his buyers being unable to properly secure his stock.

With a storm in his head, Hargrove sat down at his desk, turning on his computer and sending a call through to Earth as soon as it booted up. He waited for the call to connect, swivelling his chair around to look out the floor-to ceiling windows at the tumultuous mass of Jupiter.

“Ah, hello. I was expecting a call from you,” a voice greeted from the computer Hargrove currently had his back to.

Without turning around, Hargrove asked “do you have _any_ idea how much trouble you’ve caused me?”

There was a sigh. “You’ll have to forgive me for that. It would appear as though there has been some...dissent in the ranks. Obviously nothing I was made aware of until the damage was done. However, the unhappy few who were involved have been...dealt with.”

Hargrove laced his fingers together, eyes on the giant red storm that raged slowly across Jupiter’s surface. “You owe me for everything that was lost.”

“I’m aware. I’ve already formulated a plan to...deal with those responsible for the raid.”

“Do you have a lead?”

“As a matter of fact, one of the birds _did_ sing before we killed him. Something about a group of bounty hunters. As you know, it’s already in my agenda to get rid of all of them anyways, so when the purge happens, I’m certain they’ll be caught in the fire.”

Hargrove narrowed his eyes. “For your sake, I should hope they are.” He hit a button on the armrest of his chair, ending the call, then turned back to his computer, opening up another connection before putting a second call though. The line rang for a moment, then picked up, but the screen remained black.

“Control,” came a newer, more familiar voice.

“Sampson,” Hargrove greeted. “Do you have an update for me?”

“Yes sir.”

“Perfect,” Hargrove said, leaning forward, lacing his fingers together and propping his elbows up on his desk. “Give it to me.”

“My men and I have set up base at an abandoned Charon research facility. We’re currently working on a plan.”

“What do you have so far?”

“We’ve been observing military patrols in the area, and determined that the best place to start is at a structure known as the Tower of the Purge. It was destroyed when those two Freelancers dropped a spaceship on Locus and Felix, but the alien AI present at all of the towers may still be functional there. The goal is to head there at first light tomorrow and see what we can dig up. There aren’t any patrols that go by that area, so we should be able to slip in and out undetected.”

“Excellent,” Hargrove replied, satisfied by the solidity of Sampson’s plan. It sounded, at least, like the man had learned from the failures of his predecessors. “I want you to look into the two Great Keys on the planet as well. From what we learned from Locus and Felix’s findings, the keys were of import when it came to interacting with the AI.”

“Where should I look for those?”

“One is in the possession of Captain Tucker of Blue Team, the other is currently still with Locus, wherever he may be,” Hargrove replied. “You will have to kill them to take the keys from them, so be prepared for a fight.”

“Understood. Anything else?”

“I want that AI. Find a way to store it. Once we have the situation on Chorus under control, you will be sent to Nalome to retrieve an energy core that the research team there found, given that it didn’t somehow wind up on that colony planet. I would... _ask around_ and report back with your findings in regards to that, once your plan is underway,” Hargrove explained.

“Understood,” Sampson said. “Is that all?”

“For now,” Hargrove replied. “I wish you the best of luck, Sampson. Do not fail me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RIP the three background characters that no one (except me, kinda) cared about! I know these past few chapters have been really dark, and frankly, I’m not about that shit, so the next chapter will be more fun. I’m just trying to build some tension. Because that is how introducing villains works. Yes.  
> There will be 50% more Red Team next chapter also. Be ready.
> 
> Uh also RIP to both Ziggy, and Siris’ sense of security like holy salmon.  
> Ya’ll do not understand how much I love my boy Jersey. He’s amazing.


	25. Down We Go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fox and Locus do improv and Red Team meets The Three Amigos.

 

_ “Protestors are filling the streets in major cities all across America this week in the wake of an investigation launched against Charon Industries. The turmoil began when a police raid on an organized crime unit discovered weapons shipments linked back to the company. According to police reports, the weapons were to be sold offshore and then distributed to a number of locations, including guerrilla forces in the southern hemisphere, further fuelling the political turmoil. _

_ “Melissa Rojas, an online celebrity and the head of The International Organization for World Peace, a non-profit organization working to help third-world countries rebuild in the wake of the Great War recently tweeted: _

“The discovery of the involvement of Charon Industries with the conflict happening in the southern hemisphere, specifically in Brazil and Colombia, is one human rights infringement in a list of many...Despite claims from the U.N.S.C. that the broadcast sent out from the planet Chorus was not a credible source, recent actions from the chairman and the company itself are proof alone that it held more than a little truth...Until the chairman of Charon Industries receives justice for what he has done, #WeWillBeHere and we will be watching. #NoJusticeNoPeace #SilenceIsViolence”

_ “Out of this thread came the hashtag ‘we will be here,’ which has been trending on Twitter over the past three days with thousands of people coming forward discussing the information presented in the Epsilon broadcast that aired on an intergalactic scale several months ago. However, despite this, many others have come forward in  _ support _ of the chairman. One more notable figure being Derek Loren, the CEO of Securitech, a multi-colonial technology producer, who tweeted: _

“Chairman Malcolm Hargrove has never been anything but honorable since the day he and I first met 32 years ago. Neither of us are perfect, but we both have the best interests of humanity in mind. It’s shameful that so many are looking at the mistakes of a few misguided employees looking to make extra cash as the sole responsibility of those up top, who didn’t even know it was happening.”

_ “Regardless of whose side you take, things are not looking good for Charon Industries, and it will take a lot of work on the chairman’s part to clean up this mess. This is Diana Heathrow with your Wednesday Evening Report!” _

 

* * *

 

“Y’know, when Kimball mentioned to me that you wanted my opinion on your autopsy findings for those three soldiers, she  _ didn’t _ tell me that you were going to have them on slabs in view of the camera,” Fox remarked, staring at the holo-projection of the morgue that Grey was currently video calling to her from. 

“What’s the matter, you’re not getting squeamish on me, are you?” Grey asked teasingly.

“I cut people in half all the time, Em. That’s not ever gonna happen,” Fox scoffed, leaning back in her seat and crossing her arms. 

And like that, Grey’s smile was gone, and she glanced back over her shoulder at one of the bodies. “Actually, that’s why I wanted to call. Here, I’ll show you.”

Fox watched patiently as Grey picked up the datapad she was calling from and carried it over to one of the bodies, flipping the camera so it pointed down at the corpse, revealing the giant hole through its chest.

“Holy shit, what did  _ that?” _ Fox asked. 

“I was hoping you could provide some insight on that for me, actually,” Grey replied. “If you’ll look closely, you’ll notice that the edges of that hole are remarkably smooth. I ran some tests, and I was able to confirm that it was caused by a heat-based weapon. However, the tissue damage in Mel doesn’t match up with the sort you’d find from a plasma weapon.”

“Okay,” Fox said, not certain as to what she was getting at.

“So...I dug up the bodies a few pirates that made contact with your shield, and took some tissue samples from all of  _ them,  _ and…” Grey flipped the camera back around so Fox could see her face. “It came back as an almost perfect match.”

Fox blinked, looked over her shoulder towards the guest room down the hall, then back at the projection over the kitchen island. “Can you send me the files?”

“Done, and done,” Grey chimed.

Fox pulled the documents up the second they came through and looked over them quickly, eyes scanning over lines of notes and diagrams and snapshots of the tissue samples under a microscope. “What was the difference between the sample you pulled from Mel, and the ones you got from the pirates?” she asked. 

“Well, other than environmental factors, your shield created more uniform cellular destruction in the cauterized wounds it created, whereas Mel’s wound had an uneven cellular breakdown, and under a microscope, the damage on a molecular level was far more ragged,” Grey replied. 

“Did you take blood samples?” Fox asked, pulling up all of the images of the microscope snapshots and merging them into an array behind the video call window. 

“Well, yes, but everything came back scrambled,” Grey replied, her brow knitting together in a frown. 

“Do you still have the results?” Fox asked, finally returning her attention to the video call window. “There’s something I need to double-check before we get into the nitty-gritty of all of this.”

“I’ll send them over to you,” Grey replied, sounding a little confused. 

Fox pulled up the newly sent files and looked over the readings. A few of them had accompanying microscope snapshots. After pulling several of them up and looking over them, she said “Grey, pull up the microscope images for your blood samples. There’s something I have to show you.”

“Alright, getting them up now,” Grey replied, walking away from Mel’s body over to where Fox suspected she had some sort of computer. “Okay, got them. What am I looking at?”

“Okay,” Fox said, adjusting her position so she was sitting cross-legged in the bar stool at the counter. “You see the ones that look like they have a few red blood cells that are kinda purplish?”

“Yes?”

“So those ones are from my shield, and the ones with the red blood cells that look like they were irradiated and are kinda falling apart a little bit are from Mel,” Fox began. “So I know you read my book, which means I’m guessing you’re familiar with the term Hard Light Discharge?”

“Wait a minute!” Grey exclaimed. “Is  _ that _ what we’re looking at?”

“We are,” Fox replied. “There really aren’t a lot of studies done about it, since hard light is such a new thing for us. We’re really still just figuring out how it affects our bodies when it comes into contact with them. So like, don’t feel bad.”

“I see,” Grey mused. “So talk me through this, Doctor ‘Rosenblum.’ I wanna hear it straight from the horse’s mouth!”

Fox rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “So, when hard light isn’t concentrated enough, you get unstable and destructive amounts of H-L-D, which then go on to act really similarly to gamma radiation in the sense that they affect cells and cause mutations and stuff. Except instead of cancer, we’re finding that the cells just start killing themselves instead, and what you get is this gross, goopy black shit that fills up your veins like sludge from all of the waste.”

“Gruesome!” Grey commented, an obvious smile behind her surgeon mask. 

“When it  _ is _ concentrated enough, you get some mild cell destruction, and a few of them kill themselves, but you won’t die from it. Worst you’ll get is a fever,” Fox continued. “What all of this means is that, whoever killed your boy, Mel, was not only using hard light, but they were using it at a consistency that wasn’t high enough for it to penetrate in the most effective manner.”

“Well, I don’t know about  _ that. _ The poor sap is still  _ dead,” _ Grey replied.

Fox shrugged. “You get what I mean though. The formula wasn’t perfect, which means whoever made the weapon that killed Mel still has a ways to go before they’re as dangerous as I am. Right now, just based off of what I’m seeing, and from the studies Manning and I conducted, something like a really, really thick wall could probably stop the beam from going all the way through.”

“Interesting,” Grey said, looking away in thought for a moment. “Do you think there’s a chance you could get in contact with Manning and send him my samples? I think it would ease Kimball’s mind a little to have as many eyes on this as possible.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Fox promised, making a mental note to reach out to Manning later. “Is there anything else you need?”

“Just…a question,” Grey replied, looking back at her.

Fox blinked, not sure if she liked the sudden shift in Grey’s mood. “Shoot,” she said.

“How much does Charon know about that alien energy core in your shield?”

Fox turned her eyes upward in thought for a moment, then looked back at Grey. “Well, they know a bit about it, but I didn’t exactly dissect it for them. Do you think that they tried to figure out how to make it work based off of some of what my research team and I reported to them?”

“I don’t know,” Grey sighed.

“Well, I’d advise checking Charon’s database again. All of our reports should still be in there,” Fox suggested. “If you see anything that stands out, let me know. In the meantime, I’ll see if Manning knows anyone who studied under him who went to work for Charon.”

“That would help a lot, thank you,” Grey replied.

“No problem, Em,” Fox replied, a small smile forming on her face. “It was great talking to you. Just call if you need anything else, okay?”

“Will do,” Grey said with a nod. “Take care.”

Fox let out a long sigh as the video call ended and turned her attention to the clock on the wall.  _ Ten A-M and the bug is still sleeping, _ Fox thought with a frown, hopping out of her chair and walking down the hallway to Locus’ room. She knocked on the door and said “hey Sunshine, wakey-wakey! You slept in!”

She listened for a moment, narrowing her eyes when she didn’t hear any movement.  _ Okay, so that’s how you wanna play, huh? Just gonna ignore me? _ She turned and walked into her room, digging through her drawers until she found the object she was looking for. Sticking the kazoo between her teeth, Fox marched back to Locus’ door and started belligerently playing “All Star” by Smash Mouth as loud as she possibly could.

She made it about halfway through the chorus before the front door to her apartment opened behind her, causing her to whirl and make what was probably the worst-sounding screech ever heard by mankind on a kazoo.

Locus stood in the doorway blinking at her in bewilderment, with a bag of groceries looped around one wrist, and Milo’s leash on the other with the dog himself looking on beside him with his ears raised high.

“Uh, hi,” Fox said. But because she still had the kazoo in her mouth, it sounded less like a greeting and more like a bumblebee’s first attempts at communicating in a human language.

“What,” Locus began, clearly struggling to get his composure back, “are you doing?”

Fox took the kazoo out of her mouth and shoved it in her pocket. “Uh.” She glanced back at his bedroom door, then back at him. “Well, I thought you were still asleep, so…”

“And your plan for me sleeping in...is to wake me up with a kazoo?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at her. 

“Don’t look at me in that tone of voice,” Fox replied. “It’s a good plan. It would’ve worked!”

“You didn’t think to text me first?”

“Your phone is a black hole,” Fox remarked indignantly, walking back into the kitchen. 

“No it’s not.”

“Yeah-huh! I text you all the  _ time _ and you never reply!”

Locus didn’t say anything, but gave her a somewhat condescending look.

“It’s ‘cuz I only text you memes, isn’t it?”

“Partially.”

Fox crossed her arms and rolled her eyes, rocking back on her heels for a moment before asking “so where  _ were _ you, anyways? You had to have gotten up earlier than I did for me to not notice you’d slipped out.”

Locus didn’t answer right away, but instead stepped inside and set the bag of groceries on the kitchen counter, then turned and shut the apartment door behind him. “Milo was restless early this morning, so I took him for a walk around seven. You weren’t up yet when we left,” he replied, crouching down and unclipping Milo’s leash before standing and hanging it up on the rack next to the door. 

Milo immediately walked over to Fox with his claws clacking against the hardwood and his tail wagging. Fox bent down to pet him, a grin on her face. “Did you have fun?” she asked.

“It was...quiet,” Locus replied.

Fox looked up at him, a little surprised, then bit back the goofy grin that wanted to form on her face. “Oh, I was talking to Milo. But quiet’s good too, right?”

Locus opted not to say anything, but side-eyed her for a moment as he walked over and began unpacking the groceries from the bag.

“Well, I got up at eight-thirty, because I was  _ mad _ tired, and you just got back,” Fox said, straightening up. “So what were you two  _ doing _ for four hours?”

“I took him to the park,” Locus replied, adding no further insight. “After that, we ran to the store.”

“All on foot?” Fox asked.

“Yes.”

“That would explain the timing, yes,” Fox nodded. She walked over and leaned against the kitchen island, eyeing what Locus had pulled out of the grocery bag. “What did you get?”

“Collars.”

“More than one?”

“For variety.”

Fox couldn’t help but laugh at that. “That’s cute, but I don’t think Milo cares what color he’s wearing. He’s colorblind and missing an eye, you know.”

“I’m aware,” Locus replied, but didn’t sound sour about it.

“Mm,” Fox said, crossing her arms and looking away for a moment. “So Grey called. Based on the tissue samples she took from Mel, and the ones she got from the pirates I killed with ShowStopper, it’s pretty fair to say that we’re dealing with someone using hard light-based weaponry.”

“Is it Charon?” Locus asked, and Fox noted the edge in his voice.

“We’re not sure yet,” Fox replied. “I’m going to talk to Manning and see if he has any leads on anyone from our research group who may have joined Charon later. He may be able to point Chorus in the right direction. If not, I’m sure they’re going to figure out what they’re dealing with soon enough.”

“If it  _ is _ something like your shield, do you think General Kimball and the others have the resources to handle it?” Locus asked, turning to her.

“Maybe. I mean, they beat  _ you,” _ Fox pointed out.

Locus gave her a look.

“One way or another, it’s not a problem for us to deal with. We’ll definitely look into it if we need to, but right now our priority is smoking out Abbott and a few other major players in the underground to see what they can give us on Hargrove,” Fox said. “You know how I corresponded with Charlie like, right after that whole thing at the warehouse went down?”

Locus nodded.

“So he corresponded with me last night at like, two A-M and let me know that a bunch of said major players are going to be meeting in New Jersey to discuss kicking Abbott’s ass and taking the underground back for themselves, like,  _ tomorrow,”  _ Fox explained, leaning back against the kitchen island. “The plan for today is to call everyone for a meeting at the warehouse and talk about how we’re going to deal with that. Because the enemies of our enemies are our friends, and we could use all the allies we could get.”

“When are you planning on meeting?” Locus asked, picking up the empty grocery bag and sticking it into a bag under the sink. 

“Do you think three would work?” Fox asked.

“I have nowhere to be,” Locus replied.

“Then three it is,” Fox said, pulling out her phone and putting the information into the group chat. She was silent for a moment, then said “well, these rubber duck pajama pants are cute, but I can’t wear them anywhere.” She turned and headed back towards her room, saying over her shoulder “I’m gonna go change, how about we grab lunch after?”

“Is Milo coming with us?” Locus asked, much to Fox’s surprise.

Fox stopped just outside of her door and thought for a moment, then said “yeah, I think I know of a few restaurants with outdoor seating that don’t mind dogs. Ask Marz to make a list for you.”

Locus just nodded, and with a grin, Fox popped into her room to change.

 

* * *

 

“So here’s the scoop; Charon’s involvement with Abbott coming to light has brought a handful of really powerful people out of the shadows who wanna take one or both of them down,” Fox explained, pacing in front of the holo-table with her arms folded behind her back and her eyes on the team in front of her. The array behind her cast a cold blue glow against everything around it, displaying dozens of images and documents to support what Fox was saying. “In a few days, some major players in the underground are going to meet up in New Jersey to discuss forming a coalition of sorts to take Abbott the fuck down.” Fox stopped pacing and turned towards her team for emphasis as she said “we need to be there.” She then raised a hand and snapped her fingers, and the array behind her changed, pulling up a list of profiles, some with images attached. “We’ve got a list of attendees, all of whom have a  _ lot _ of influence both in the underground, and in the business world. If we can get them to work with us, we’ll have a whole lot more firepower to use against Hargrove. Our objective is to get inside, convince the others to work against both Abbott and Charon, and get them under our thumb. Any questions?”

The rest of the crew exchanged looks with one another before Siris spoke up. “Okay, so how is this going to work? You can’t exactly just waltz in there. No one knows who you or any of us  _ are.” _

“You’re right,” Fox said, turning back to him. “We haven’t built up enough of a reputation for any of these guys to know who they’re  _ dealing _ with. Which is why I won’t be going as  _ Fox,  _ but as Pepper  _ instead.” _

For a moment, one could have heard a pin drop in the warehouse.

Then Grizzly took a deep breath and said “with due respect, are you out of your  _ mind?” _

“Boss, they’ll never trust someone from the U.N.S.C.” Jersey added.

“And even if they  _ do _ go along, they’ll just try to  _ use _ you to gain even more power,” Siris agreed.

“He’s right,” Locus said, looking back at Fox.

“Look, I appreciate all of your concern, but this is one of those ‘can’t go under it’ kind of scenarios,” Fox said, annoyed. “If they find out someone in the U.N.S.C. is willing to help them, it’ll boost their morale. And I  _ know _ they’ll try to use me. The key to making this work is to string the first guy up and make him an example for whoever might come next. 

“That,” Jersey remarked, “is a dangerous game.”

“So is Grifball, and people love that shit,” Fox replied flatly.

“The only way I could see that  _ working _ is if you prove you’ve got bigger balls than everyone else there,” Rocket said. “And I mean, you’re pretty scary as it is, so you  _ might _ be able to pull it off. But there might be better odds if we knew who was going to be there.” He eyed Siris, then added “some of us have experience in dealing with some of these guys. If we know who we’re up against, we might know how to handle them.”

“I agree,” Fox said, a little grateful that  _ someone _ was seeing things her way. “Which is why I already had Charlie get me a list of attendees, hence the profiles I pulled up. Marz, would you walk us through those please?”

_ “Sure thing,” _ Marz replied, brining the first profile to the front of the array.  _ “We have Conrad Eagleton, owner of Eagleton Shipping Co. Mostly deals in general smuggling. Franklin White, pharmaceutical company owner, smuggles drugs. Marco Suárez, mercenary, militia leader, is pissed off that Charon is supplying weapons to the guys he’s trying to fight…” _

Fox listened as the other names were rattled off, zoning out for a moment and only dragging herself back to reality when she heard Marz say  _ “Raul Eduardo Lozano Bahena, head of an international drug and weapons trade, came back from overseas in Spain to clean up a mess left behind by his now deceased little brother--” _

“Who was his younger brother?”

Fox looked over, surprised, when she heard Siris speak up, and the tension in his shoulders was enough to clue her in that something was wrong. 

_ “Ruben Vincente Lozano Bahena,” _ Marz replied, confused.

Fox narrowed her eyes at the look Siris exchanged with Locus, noting that the rest of her teammates seemed equally concerned. “Are you going to share with the class?” she asked, a slight edge to her voice. Someone was hiding something. She didn’t like that. 

“We know him,” Siris replied, turning to her and crossing his arms. “Back when we were bounty hunters--Locus and I--we had a run-in with him.”

Fox raised an eyebrow and leaned back against the holo-table. “That  _ run-in _ wouldn’t have happened to have ended with his death, would it?”

Siris cringed. “It did.”

Fox watched him and Locus for a moment, the wheels in her mind turning. “Well this certainly complicates things,” she said slowly. “Marz, send the rest of the profiles to everyone’s phones. They can read up on them later. Right now, we have more pressing matters to handle.”

_ “Copy that.” _

Fox straightened up, watching the blue glare cast across her teammates’ faces disappear as Marz cut the holo-table off. “Well boys, it’s story time. Who wants to speak first?” she asked, looking back and forth at Siris and Locus. 

Siris sighed. “It was a bad op. Ithaca PD called us in to nab Lozano’s son.”

“The IPD turned on us the minute we had him in custody,” Locus added. “We were never meant to succeed.”

“Afterwards, we agreed to try to put a dent in Lozano’s funds by holding his son for ransom,” Siris continued, running a hand through his hair. “The idea was to teach him a lesson and force him to keep his son in check. That’s not what happened though. Lozano told us we would be doing him a favor for killing his son, so we did, and when Lozano showed up to make us pay for the damage we’d caused getting the kid, we killed him too.”

“Holy fucking shit,” Jersey said slowly, leaning away from the two. 

“You two flipped what the IPD had planned for you on its head, and took down the head of a crime syndicate in New York while you were at it? Remind me not to piss either of you off,” Grizzly added flatly, sitting back in the folding chair he had settled into before the meeting had started.

“If his older brother finds out what we did, it could make trouble for all of us,” Locus said.

“Well…” Fox began hesitantly. “That really depends on what sort of relationship he  _ had _ with his brother.”

_ “From what I’m seeing, they weren’t very close. Little B ran away from the family business overseas to start his own super-cool criminal organization after an argument with his brother and father. Apparently he didn’t even go to his own dad’s  _ **_funeral_ ** _ five years later because he was so bitter about it,”  _ Marz piped up. 

Fox glanced back towards the holo-table, deep in thought. “Then you two might have done him a favor,” she said, looking back towards Locus and Siris. “Either way, it’s in our best interests to get on his good side, and that may mean that we’ll have to be honest about your involvement, if he asks.”

“Lozano was unaware of Siris’ involvement until he came to try to kill us,” Locus spoke up. “There’s a chance his older brother still doesn’t know.”

Fox looked over at Siris, curious. “Well, if that’s the case, then I’m keeping you out of enemy airspace until further notice,” she said to him. _“You_ on the other hand,” she continued, turning to Locus, who had a look about him like he already knew what she was going to say, “are going into that meeting with me.”  
“Is that...smart?” Jersey asked, eyes darting nervously back and forth between Locus and Fox.

“There’s no reason to get Siris involved,” Locus replied.

“I was more referring to the fact that you’re pretty much getting dangled in front of the guy like a piece of meat,” Jersey said flatly.

“The way I see it,” Fox began slowly, “bringing him along is a good way to make sure that if Lozano or any of his friends see him, they know he’s with me and that fucking with him will only bring along trouble.”

“As long as you can enforce that, there shouldn’t be a problem,” Grizzly commented. 

Fox met his gaze out of the corner of her eye. “I can, and there won’t be.” She was silent for a moment, looking out at the rest of her team, then asked, “any other questions?”

“Is Niner gonna join us?” Rocket asked.

“Well, we don’t really need a pilot for this one,” Fox replied. “I told her to sit this one out. We’ll call on her when we need her.”

“Aww,” Rocket said. 

“Anyone else?” Fox asked.

“Yeah, what are the rest of us supposed to be doing?” Jersey asked. 

“Marz, pull up the map for me, please,” Fox said, glancing over her shoulder before gesturing for the others to join her around the holo-table. Fox waited until they had all gathered around before she began walking them through. “So, Jersey, you’re going to be hanging out on this hill here as our sniper. If someone starts trouble, you’ll have a clear shot into the manor through most of those windows. Grizzly, you’re going to be keeping an eye on the front entrance, doing the same thing. Siris, you’ll be on the roof. There are a number of skylights you can keep tabs on stuff through. Locus, you’ll be with me, and Rocket, you’ll be the back-up driver in case we need a decoy,” Fox explained, rotating the projection of the manor Marz had pulled up as she explained her teammates’ roles. 

“Jesus, how bad do you think this meeting is going to be?” Jersey asked, brow furrowed in concern.

“Probably not bad enough to need all of you,” Fox replied, tapping a finger against her chin. “But there’s no such thing as being over-prepared.” She leaned against the table and looked around to see if anyone had anything else to add before saying “we’ll go over all of this again tomorrow. But right now, I want you guys to go home and rest up. The meeting isn’t until eleven tomorrow night, so we won’t be leaving until around seven. We’ll meet back here an hour and a half before, at five-thirty, to go over everything that we just discussed again before we head out. Understand?”

“Got it,” Jersey replied.

“Yup!” Rocket chimed.

“Understood,” Siris said.

And Locus and Grizzly both nodded.

Satisfied that she had everyone on board, Fox cut the holo-table off and stepped back. “Alright, meeting adjourned. Everyone go home and take a load off. Tomorrow is going to be busy, and I want you all focused.”

 

* * *

 

“Well this place looks...historic…” Fox commented, staring up at the large, colonial-style mansion as her and Locus walked down the stone path through the garden that led them to the front door. Just minutes ago, the rest of their team had confirmed that they were all in position, giving them the all-clear to move in. 

“Do we know who’s hosting the meeting?” Locus asked, keeping his eyes ahead towards their destination. 

“Some guy named Alexei Dragomir. Russian. Part of the mob,” Fox replied. “He was on the list Marz sent you guys. Did you read it?”

“Part of it.”

“Oh well. It doesn’t really matter. I’m going to be doing all of the talking anyways,” Fox sighed. “Just, do me a solid and keep an eye on everyone else for me, yeah? There are a lot of people attending, and I can only focus on a few at a time. You’re going to be my eyes and ears here.”

Locus nodded. “Understood.”

Fox forced a smile onto her face, then walked up the steps to the front door. She reached out to ring the doorbell, but stopped, and looked over at Locus, adding “by the way, uh, Charlie mentioned that Dragomir’s a little...weird. So, uh, prepare for that, I guess?”

“Weird how?” Locus asked, looking down at her.

“Charlie described him as ‘that one aunt who drinks too much during the holidays combined with Weird Al Yankovic,’ and I have no idea what he even meant by that,” Fox replied. “I...I just figured I’d warn you. Just so you’re prepared.” Fox then took a deep breath, pushing the doorbell and stepping back, listening to the loud chimes that sounded an awful lot like a church bell tolling to announce the hour. She exchanged a look with Locus, then watched as the door swung inwards, revealing an older man who couldn’t have been more than a few inches taller than her in a white dress shirt, red vest, and black slacks. 

The man adjusted his glasses, then grinned and said “ah! Miss Matsukaze! I’m so glad you could make it. I saw you were added to the guest list at the very last second. An odd place for someone like you to wind up, but I won’t judge!” He stepped back out of the doorway and gestured for him to follow them inside. “Come in! Come in!”

Fox raised her eyebrows and let out a stressed sigh, then her and Locus stepped inside, finding themselves in a foyer.  Fox turned as she heard the door shut behind them, and watched as the butler bolted it shut before walking over to them.

“Now, before I allow the two of you to go any further, I  _ will _ need you to leave your weapons over on that table there,” the butler said, nodding at a round table that was pushed against one of the large white pillars that supported the second floor balcony above. On it was an array of pistols, knives, grenades, and a single battle rifle with a pink tiger painted on the side of it.

Locus looked over at Fox questioningly, almost like he was asking whether or not to do what the butler said. Fox nodded at the table, and he walked over and pulled his gun out of its holster, setting it down with the others.

“Very good,” the butler said, walking past and waving for them to follow him. “Now, I’ll take you to master Dragomir, and he’ll get you settled in.”

“This’ll be good,” Fox muttered under her breath, exchanging a look with Locus out of the corner of her eye. 

He didn’t say anything, but followed her as she walked after the butler.

 

* * *

 

Locus hadn’t been sure what to expect after the little conversation he and Fox had outside of the mansion, but it certainly wasn’t what he had prepared for. When he stepped inside of the mansion, it was like he had walked into a jungle. There were potted plants  _ everywhere, _ mounted on the walls, hanging from the ceiling. The floors were a shiny white marble, and as they stepped into the foyer, Locus noticed the balcony for a second floor above them, vines growing up its railing. He half expected to hear drums coming from a board game somewhere.  _ The only thing this place is missing is Robin Williams and a bad CGI rhino, _ Locus thought, taking a good look around. If Fox were just as thrown off as he was by the appearance of the mansion’s interior, she wasn’t showing it, though Locus had a feeling she would probably bring it up later. 

They had only just stepped inside when the butler asked him to remove the weapons he had brought. Locus looked over at Fox, waiting for her approval before doing anything. When she simply nodded at him to do as he was told, Locus (somewhat begrudgingly) walked over and placed the pistol down on the table the butler had gestured towards...right next to the rifle with the pink tiger painted on it. Locus wondered if its owner would be flamboyant enough to pick out.

He looked over when the butler spoke up, and gave Fox a nod of acknowledgement when she muttered to him under her breath as she walked past, then he followed her.

The butler led them down a hallway decorated with ornate damask wallpaper and knights in shining armor on stands. Literal knights in shining armor. Like something one would expect to find in some sort of medieval castle. Locus genuinely couldn’t pin what sort of aesthetic the owner of the house was aiming for, and decided to try not to think about it until they reached a large metal door at the end of the hallway.

The butler rapped his knuckles against its surface twice and stepped back with his arms folded behind his back. A moment later, a panel on the door slid back, and Locus was able to pick out two eyes staring at them from beyond it. 

“What have you brought me, Manuel?” a voice with a thick Russian accent asked.

“Your last two guests, sir,” Manuel replied. “Just in time for the meeting.”

_ “Ah!” _ The eyes behind the door brightened, and the panel slid back in place. Locus listened to the noise of what sounded like a  _ number _ of locks being undone, then the door slowly swung inward.

“Here you are,” Manuel said, stepping to the side so Fox and Locus could walk past. 

“Thank you,” Fox said, then walked through the door.

Locus followed her, eyeing Manuel out of the corner of his eye before stepping through the door into what appeared to be some sort of den. The first thing Locus noticed was the skeleton standing by the doorway with a hat on its head, looking very much like something one would find in a science classroom. The second were the several chairs positioned around a fireplace that had a large...what  _ looked _ to be the head of a  _ promethean crawler _ mounted above it. Locus wasn’t able to focus on it for very long, as a tall man stepped into his view, his arms spread wide in greeting, dressed in a way that made Locus wonder if he realized that he’d missed Comic Con.

“Greetings you two! So glad you could join us!” the man exclaimed in a thick Russian accent. “The name,” he said, making a flamboyant gesture with both hands, “is Alexei Dragomir.” He then turned to one side and looked over his shoulder at them, one hand on his hip, the other raised high in the air, posing like he expected the graphics associated with a  _ Borderlands _ character card to appear around him as a means of introduction. “Head of the Russian Mob here in New York, and your  _ fabulous _ host this evening!”

Locus, having no idea what to say or do, simply exchanged a confused look with Fox, which she gave him right back. 

“Um, hello,” Fox said. “I’m--”

“Pepper Matsukaze!” Dragomir exclaimed, jerking out of his pose and spinning around and grabbing Fox’s hand, shaking it vigorously. “Oh, I’ve heard all good things about you! We’re very excited to have you! I’m using the royal ‘we,’ of course, as I  _ don’t _ think many of the others know you’re coming, but I’m sure they’ll be happy to have you all the same!”

“Well, it’s good to be here,” Fox replied, a smile that looked an awful lot like a grimace appearing on her face. “I must say, you’ve got an interesting collection of...things. Is that Promethean crawler head real?”

“Oh, but of course! Everything in here is!” Dragomir replied with sparkling eyes.  _ “Including _ that skeleton next to your friend over there. He’s an old friend of mine. Donated his bones to me after he died. It’s nice keeping him around though. He makes an  _ excellent _ coat hanger!”

“I see,” Fox said weakly.

Locus side-eyed the skeleton and took a small step away from it.

Fox was silent for a moment, before cleaning her throat and asking “could I have my hand back please?”

“Ah,” Dragomir said, letting go of her hand. “You’ll have to forgive me. I get carried away sometimes! Now,” he turned and pointed at the bookcase next to the fireplace and exclaimed something in what Locus assumed was Russian. 

Locus watched in surprise as the front of the bookshelf suddenly sunk inwards with a heavy clacking sound, then sunk downwards, revealing a flight of stairs that went down and around a corner. 

“If you’ll follow me,” Dragomir said, walking over to the staircase, “we can get this little meeting started!” With that, he turned and started down the stairs, calling for them to follow him.

Locus looked over as Fox let out a sigh, puffing her cheeks out as she did so. She met his gaze, rolled her eyes, then jerked her head in the direction of the staircase before turning to follow Dragomir.

The staircase took them down to a cozy room with a number of comfortable-looking chairs around a round wooden table with a circle of black glass cut in the center of it. Sitting in the chairs were at least a dozen men in relatively expensive-looking clothes, chatting to one another with drinks in their hands. However they all fell silent when Dragomir stepped aside and allowed Fox to enter the room.

Locus kept close to her, eyes scanning over the room. It wasn’t rocket science to figure out that no one was happy to see her, and that sentiment was only added to when a man in a grey suit at the far side of the room spoke up and asked “what the  _ fuck, _ Dragomir? You brought a damn govermnent official to our fuckin’ meeting!?”

“Calm yourselves, gentlemen,” Fox spoke up quickly, her voice cold and harsh against the warm space, “I’m here for business, same as you. Abbott’s been causing you trouble, and he’s frankly been a thorn in my side as of late, so I’m interested in helping you remove him.”

If that had elicited a response from any of the other men in the room, Locus hadn’t noticed. Across the room, next to the first man who had spoken up and accused Dragomir of betraying them, was Lozano. And he was staring right at him.

Locus held his gaze, and Lozano narrowed his eyes, then looked over at the others and said “why don’t we hear her out? I’m...interested in what she has to say.” He looked to Fox, then nodded at the empty chair in front of her. “Why don’t you take a seat?”

Fox raised an eyebrow, but sat down. Dragomir took the seat next to her, folding his hands together and propping his chin up on them. 

Locus, still not happy with the energy in the room, made a point of standing right behind Fox’s chair, watching everyone else and waiting for someone to do something stupid. 

“Let’s begin, shall we?” Dragomir spoke up. When no one said anything, he cleared his throat and continued “we’re all gathered here today to discuss to discuss a problem that has presented itself to us time and time again over the past few years. A man by the name of Gabriel Abbott.”

Locus looked around as the other men nodded, trying to pick out any faces he recognized from the list Fox had put in the group chat. 

“Recently, Abbott has begun spreading out into territories that are not his, stealing business partners and men from all of us in order to expand his empire,” Dragomir said. “It goes without saying that the man is a nuisance, but he’s a formidable nuisance. Yet, with the recent police raid on one of his many weapons caches on the east coast, along with the murder investigation that has been added to it, he’s currently at a spot where, with a bit of effort, we could weaken him.” Dragomir paused for a moment, looking around at the others before continuing. “The goal of this meeting is to come to an agreement on how we want to handle the situation. We’re not all necessarily here to make friends, but ideally, we can all put off any rivalries until this annoyingly big fish is caught.”

“If I may, I think it’s in our best interests to learn a little bit about our unexpected guest before we continue,” a man Locus recognized as Deacon Mayfield suggested. 

“I understand your concerns, gentlemen,” Fox said. “But like I said before, I’m here for the same reasons as you.”

“Abbott can’t possibly be an issue for you. You’re not even  _ involved _ in the weapons trade,” the man in the grey suit scoffed.

“No, but he’s been causing trouble in  _ my _ city,” Fox shot back. “And I’m frankly not a fan of some of the people he’s associated with,  _ especially _ considering all of the tensions some of them have caused. The U.N.S.C. is in a difficult position as it is. We don’t need a gangbanger making our lives even more difficult.”

“Which of his associates are you referring to?” Lozano asked, a small, interested smile on his face that only made Locus more wary of his intentions.

“Do I really have to say it?” Fox asked, raising an eyebrow and looking around at the men at the table. “I figured you cats would be smart enough to put it together yourselves.”

“I think we all just want to hear you say it,” said another man who was wearing a black beret and what appeared to be some sort of military fatigues with a bright pink bandana tied around his left upper arm. Locus wondered if he was the owner of the tiger gun.

Fox rolled her eyes. “Chairman of Charon Industries, Malcolm Hargrove,” she sighed.

“Now that’s...intriguing. I was  _ certain _ you were friends with him. Your father certainly was,” said the man in the grey suit. 

From his angle, Locus could see Fox’s expression harden. He wondered if she sensed the underlying threat in the man’s words. 

The man in the beret leaned forward and propped up his chin with his hand, saying “let’s be honest with each other here.  _ Are _ you in cahoots with that bastard chairman, Malcolm Hargrove who’s been selling Abbott his goods?”

Locus stole a look around the room, silently hoping that whatever Fox said next wouldn’t accidentally make enemies out of everyone here. There were far too many outcomes he could imagine for the situation they were cornered in. And he didn’t like most of them.

“I’m certain  _ he _ thinks I am,” Fox replied flatly.

_ “Are _ you, though?” the man asked.

From his angle, Locus saw Fox blink slowly. “I’m sorry, what was your name again?” she asked in a faux sweet voice that Locus knew spelled danger.

The man leaned back a little. “Marco Suárez,” he replied, the look on his face suggesting that he sensed the threat.

“Mr. Suárez,” Fox began, a bitter smile on her face, “if we’re being completely honest here, there’s nothing I would like more than to watch that man  _ burn.  _ And if the rest of you have any  _ ounce _ of self-preservation, you’ll hopefully feel the same.”

A smile broke across Suárez’s face, and he let out a burst of laughter. “Oh, I  _ like _ you!” he grinned.

“Interesting that up until this point, you’ve never made that opinion known.  _ Suspicious, _ even,” said a man in a nice, dark blue suit with golden buttons that Locus recognized as Paul Spier, the owner of a military weapons distributor. 

“Is it as suspicious as the number of under-the-table deals you’ve done with the man over the past few years?” Fox asked sweetly.  _ “Curious _ that you’re working with a man who also provides weapons to the guy  _ we’re _ all trying to take down.”

Locus watched the color drain from Spier’s face, and couldn’t help but feel a small amount of satisfaction. 

“Who we’ve done business with is in the past,” the man in the grey suit scoffed, taking a sip of his drink. “And it’s frankly none of your concern. The only thing that matters now is how we’re going to handle Abbott.”

“You know, I’ve run the numbers,” Fox said, picking at one of her fingernails. “A good number of you have done and  _ continue _ to do business with Hargrove. Out of all of you, in comparison, Abbott is his most  _ notable _ distributor. If something were to, say,  _ happen _ to Hargrove to prevent him from doing business, such as, I don’t know, a life sentence, then Abbott will find himself in some  _ deep _ shit.”

“And I take it you plan on trying to make that happen?” Lozano asked, taking a sip of what looked like whiskey he had in his glass. 

“It’s going to, one way or another,” Fox replied evenly. “So I’d suggest the rest of you start divvying up territory now.”

That got a couple of laughs out of a few of the men around the table, and Locus couldn’t help but feel like they weren’t taking Fox very seriously.

“While we’re still being honest, why don’t you tell us what your  _ real _ motivation for coming here is?” Spier asked.

“You’re all here to get rid of Abbott while he’s weakened by that police investigation,” Fox began. “I’m here to ask you to help me take down Hargrove too.”

“Now why on  _ Earth _ would we do a thing like that?” asked another man that Locus recognized as Conrad Eagleton.

Fox looked over at him. “Do the math. Abbott’s already lost a great deal of business due to that investigation. His buyers have lost confidence in him, but so has Hargrove. If we take Hargrove down, he’ll drag Abbott down with him, probably as a last-ditch effort to make himself look like the good guy.”

“And what about the rest of us?” Spier asked. “Who’s to say he won’t try to take us down too?”

“That’s the thing, he probably will in order to lighten his sentence or even be granted immunity. With the rise of the insurrectionist threat, and the knowledge that all of you have sold to criminal groups in the past, it wouldn’t be difficult to divert everyone’s attention once he’s in a position to do so,” Fox replied.

“She’s right,” Lozano spoke up, sitting back, much to Locus’ surprise. He caught Fox exchanging a look with him and shrugged at her. 

“Okay, so what the fuck are  _ you _ going to do to keep that from happening?” Spier exclaimed. “You’re the one working for the government. If we’re going to help you, there’d better be something in it for us!”

_ “Ay, _ the lady ain’t gotta do a damned thing,  _ pendejo,” _ Suárez said. “The hole you’ve dug yourself into is your own damn fault. The world is changing, my friends. The only way any of you are going to survive is if you cut your losses and start focusing on other ways to make a profit.”

“Oh, and how do you suppose we go about doing that?” Spier spat.  
“Either go legitimate, or turn Hargrove in yourselves before he has a chance to go after any of you,” Suárez replied evenly.

The uproar that followed in wake of Suárez’s comment took Locus off guard, but didn’t seem to faze Fox in the slightest. Locus watched as she sat back and tucked a loose lock from the wig she was wearing behind her ear and waited for the clamour to die down.

“Doing that would paint a target on all of our backs!” the man next to Suárez exclaimed.

“Why the fuck should we listen to the leader of a militia group anyways?” another man added. “Marco, you don’t know  _ anything _ that doesn’t involve violence and bloodshed. How the fuck are you trying to lecture  _ us _ on diplomacy?”

“Why don’t you ask yourself the same fucking  _ question?” _ Suárez snapped, standing up and slamming a hand down on the table.

“Calm yourself, Suárez. He’s only trying to aggravate you,” Lozano said calmly, waving at Suárez to sit back down. “Buren, I would suggest you keep such hypocritical questions to yourself in the future,” he added to the other man. “Especially when speaking to a man whose people are directly affected by the deals  _ you _ have made to fuel the rising political tensions in Brazil.”

Buren turned beet red, but crossed his arms and looked away instead of responding.

“Suárez brings up a very good point,” Fox spoke up finally. “If we can take down Hargrove first, you’ll all have less to worry about in the long run.”

“And what if he comes after us in retaliation?” Spier sneered.

“I have connections that I can use to keep all of you out of jail if something like that were to happen,” Fox replied. And like that, the room went silent. 

“Now,” Lozano said, lacing his fingers together on the table and leaning forward, “you have my attention.”

“Immunity,” said a greying man with a heavy accent. “Or else I’m out.”

“Immunity, I’m afraid, is off the table for now,” Fox said, eyeing him. “But I’ve got ways of keeping your hands clean, and keeping you out of trouble if I need to.”

“Save all that string-pulling nonsense for them,” Suárez said, waving her off. “Truth is, I’m not even a dealer. I’m just a buyer who’s here because he heard that the man who sold weapons to the military group that has been fucking with his people down in Brazil was going to be here too.” 

Locus barely had time to register the gun in Suárez’s hands before the man turned and shot Buren, and the man Locus presumed to be his bodyguard who was standing behind him. Locus tensed up, and his hand automatically went for the hilt of the Great Key in his pocket, but Fox held up a hand without looking at him, like she already knew his intentions. So Locus took a deep breath and crossed his arms instead, eyes locked on Suárez, waiting for the man’s next move.

“This table,” Dragomir said, squeezing his eyes shut and pinching the bridge of his nose, “is  _ mahogany. _ This carpet we are on is from India and cost me several thousand dollars, and you have gotten blood and brain matter on  _ both.” _

“My apologies,” Suárez said, sounding earnest.

Dragomir simply opened his eyes and fixed Suárez in an unamused look, then straightened up and hollered “MANUEL!”

There was silence for a moment, then a creak, and the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs. Locus looked over his shoulder to see Manuel appear with a shiny silver platter in one hand. He walked over to Suárez and held it out to him, saying “your weapon please, sir,” and Locus could hear an edge of annoyance in his voice. 

Suárez’s expression grew tight, and for a moment, Locus doubted he would give his gun up. But then Suárez flipped the safety back on his weapon and set it down on the tray. Manuel straightened back up with an unenthusiastic “thank you,” and turned on his heel and walked around the table, heading back up the stairs. 

No one in the room said anything, and the sound of Buren’s blood dripping onto the carpet and Manuel’s footsteps were the only noises that filled the space. Then there was a clacking sound that reverberated through the room as the door shut behind Manuel, and Fox finally spoke up.

“So,” she said, her voice unwavering, “Suárez, are you looking for work, by chance?”

Suárez, who was is in the middle of trying to wipe some of Buren’s blood off of his face, raised his eyebrows at her. “Excuse me?”

“There’s a task force that’s been set up by the U.N.S.C. to investigate Hargrove. They deal with a lot of dangerous people, and could probably use someone like you on their side,” Fox explained. “I’m in contact with their leader, and if you’re interested, I could have them sit down and have a chat with you. I hear the pay is  _ very _ good.”

Locus’ eyes darted to Fox, wondering just  _ how _ she planned to pull off hiring Suárez, given her identity was common knowledge amongst the rest of their team. So far the man had done nothing to prove himself trustworthy aside from declaring his hatred of Charon Industries. Locus hoped Fox had more to bank on him than that.

Suárez cracked a smile. “That’s...kind of you, but I’m not interested in pay. But if it gives me a chance to do some real fucking damage against that Hargrove son of a bitch, then yeah, I’m fuckin’ in.”

“Excellent,” Fox smiled. “You can expect them to get in contact with you a few days after this meeting. They’ll tell you everything you need to know.”

“Sounds good,” Suárez replied.

“She sure doesn’t waste any time,” Locus heard Eagleton mutter to the man next to him.

“Tell us about this task force,” Lozano said. 

Fox raised an eyebrow at him. “They’re the people on the ground, and my way of keeping you safe.”

Locus stared at her, wondering what she was playing at, and if she had even thought any of it through.

“Go on,” the man with the accent said. 

“See, they don’t answer to me, but I’m friends with their leader, and I also provide information to them as needed,” Fox replied. “That said, if I tell them that I’ve made a few friends who will help them take out a rather irritating person of interest who has already made it evident that they’re going to be a problem, they’ll probably be willing to...do something about them.”

“They’re you’re method of keeping our hands clean, yes?” Lozano clarified.

“On the ground, yes,” Fox replied. 

“This task force won’t come after us, will they?” Spier asked quietly from where he had all but sunken into his chair, only just managing to pull his eyes away from Buren’s body to ask the question.

“Keep your nose clean, and you should be safe,” Fox replied, lacing her fingers together and sitting back. 

“And how do we know that you won’t just turn us over yourself when you’re done with Charon?” the man in the grey suit asked. 

Fox waved her hand dismissively. “I’ve got no quarrel with any of you, and frankly, I have bigger fish to fry.”

The room fell silent for a moment, then Lozano finished his drink and set it down on the table and said, “well, I for one am interested to see where this will go. You can count me in.”

Locus raised an eyebrow at him, surprised that he would cave so easily, especially after how stubborn his brother had been. He wondered if this was something they could use to their advantage later, if it didn’t come back to bite them first.

“I’m...interested,” Spier said.

“So am I,” said the man in the grey suit.

Eagleton nodded in agreement.

Fox simply nodded and looked around at the others. “The rest of you; take some time to think and get back to me.” She stood and adjusted her jacket, turning to leave, then paused and said over her shoulder “just make sure you weigh your odds before making a decision.” She then gave Locus a nod and headed towards the stairs back the way they’d come.

Locus gave Lozano one final look before turning and following her.

 

* * *

 

“Alright boss, you’ve kept us waiting long enough. Food’s here. Are you gonna tell us how it went now?” Jersey asked, taking a sip from his fountain drink.

Fox sighed, looking around at the others as they dug into their meals, all while looking at her expectantly. “Any of you ever seen  _ The Godfather?” _ she asked.

“So, bad?” Rocket answered, popping a fry into his mouth. 

“Two men were shot to death, if that answers anything,” Locus replied flatly.

Fox sat back and looked across the table at him, narrowing her eyes slightly. He’d been in a weird mood ever since they’d left, and hadn’t spoken up about what had caused it despite all the poking and prodding she had done on the car ride to the restaurant. She figured it might have to do with some of the deals that were made during the meeting, but wasn’t entirely sure. The sudden silence from the rest of her team piqued her interest, and she looked over at them to find them all staring wide-eyed at her.

“What... _ happened?” _ Siris asked, setting his sandwich back down on his plate.

“One of the attendees, Marco Suárez, apparently showed up just to kill a dude who’s been selling weapons that have fuelled the political turmoil in the southern hemisphere,” Fox replied. 

“And you  _ hired _ him on the spot for it,” Locus added.

_ Is  _ **_that_ ** _ what you’re pissed off about? _ Fox wondered, shooting him a look. “The guy has useful skills and connections. He’s the leader of a militia group; the sort of ally we  _ want _ in all of this. The more guys with guns we can get on our side, the better.”

Locus didn’t say anything, but crossed his arms and looked out the window.

“Do you think we can trust him?” Grizzly asked, taking a bite of his burger. 

“He hates Hargrove, and seems pretty hellbent on taking him down,” Fox began, “but we haven’t met him yet. I’m going to review his profile with Marz and Kimball tonight to make sure. The only issue I have with him currently is that he seems like a bit of a hothead who acts on impulse. Tonight could have gone way worse for him than it did. And he seems very loyal to his country, so if what we’re doing doesn’t reap positive results for them, he might not stick around. But we can work with all of those things.”

Grizzly nodded, looking satisfied. 

Siris, however, looked unconvinced, and Fox noted the way he glanced at Locus before speaking up. “Is it wise to have someone whose loyalty we can’t count on working with us?”

Fox stared up at the hanging light fixture above the booth they were all seated at for a moment, turning her gaze over to the bar to her left for a moment before saying “I didn’t know if I could count on any of you when we first got started.” She looked back over at Siris. “We can’t judge him if we haven’t really met him yet. That’s not fair to anyone,” she added, making a point of glancing over at Locus before continuing. “His heart seems to be in the right place, which is why I offered him a position in the first place. If I didn’t think he was someone we could work with, I never would have brought it up with him to begin with. You can count on that.”

“Right,” Siris said, leaning back. “So...how did the rest of the meeting go? Did...did Lozano say anything about what happened to his brother?”

“He never brought it up,” Locus answered before Fox had the chance to reply.

Fox eyed him for a moment before adding “he seemed more interested in what I was bringing to the table in terms of dealing with Abbott.”

“Which was?” Jersey asked.

“I basically told them that they either work alongside me to take Hargrove down, because doing so would hurt Abbott a  _ lot, _ or suffer the consequences when Hargrove takes all of them down with him in exchange for a lighter sentence,” Fox replied.

“Could he  _ do _ that?!” Rocket exclaimed, slamming his drink down on the table and leaning over to look at her with wide eyes.

“Eh,” Fox pulled a face. “I mean, it’s been done before. Bad people get lighter sentences or immunity all the time because they made the right deals and handed over the right information.”

“Now hold on a minute, you  _ never _ said Hargrove might get immunity when we started this whole thing,” Grizzly spoke up.

Out of the corner of her eye, Fox noticed Locus giving her a pointed look. “I think...the odds of that happening are  _ stupidly _ slim,” she said slowly. “After hearing about what happened on Chorus, the U.N.S.C. isn’t exactly in public favor at the moment, and with the shit going down in the southern hemisphere, and the Insurrectionists attacking colony planets, them giving someone like Hargrove, whose crimes have been all made public, immunity, would cause a  _ lot _ of trouble down the road.” She sat back and stared at the table, knitting her brows together in a frown. “We live in a really interesting time right now. Politics are unstable. I’ve felt it ever since I got back, and even more so since I’ve become the CEO of Emblem. The U.N.S.C. has more power than it ever has, but it hasn’t taken interest in putting it in any of the right places, and as a result, their public favor has gone  _ way _ down. And with the help of social media, their negligence has become an incredibly visible, trending topic. Right now, they’ve got two options; either bow their heads and grow a little humility and do what the people want,  _ or _ ignore it, and face the output of all of the social tensions that have been building over the past ten years or so.”

“And then the U.N.S.C. sends cops and soldiers to shut down the protests, same as they always do,” Jersey said bitterly. “I’ve seen how his movie ends.”

Rocket didn’t say anything, but looked away uncomfortably. 

“You underestimate how much damage the right people can do when they’re forced to choose between doing the right thing, or suffering shitty consequences,” Fox replied. “The people at that meeting, they all have a  _ lot _ of power. They’re all businessmen with a lot of money in their pockets, and they know that if they don’t use the influence it brought them to take Hargrove down, he’s going to come for them to save himself. I can’t see  _ any _ of them being so loyal to him that they’d risk their own skins.”

“How sure are you of that?” Jersey asked, crossing his arms.

“Eighty-five percent,” Fox replied. “And if they decide to be heroes, I know their names, their faces, and the business they’ve done with Hargrove.” She looked over at Locus, who, to her surprise, was watching her with a small amount of interest. “I didn’t go into this without a solid plan. I’ve got ways of making this go our way regardless of what happens.”

Siris let out a long sigh, “that’s all I needed to hear.”

They all fell silent for a moment, and Fox took a sip of her drink for the first time, wishing she could enjoy it. But the bitter taste in her mouth that the conversation had left overwhelmed its flavor, and she set it back down with a sigh. 

“So...what happens now?” Rocket asked hesitantly.

Fox looked over at him, thought for a moment, then replied “we report back to Kimball with what went down. After that, all we can do is wait.”

 

* * *

 

“So...we gonna talk about this, or are we just gonna let it sit?”

Locus looked over at her. “Talk about what?” he asked.

Fox took her eyes off the road for a moment to stare at him pointedly. “You’ve been in a mood ever since that meeting, and you seemed pretty pissed off when we got food afterwards. Letting bad vibes settle isn’t good for anyone. So if you have something to say, say it.”

Locus pulled his eyes away from her and stared out the windshield at the dark highway in front of them, starting to wish he had chosen to ride in the so-called “party van” Grizzly and the others were driving back to Boston in. 

“Okay, is it something  _ I _ did?”

Locus narrowed his eyes at the passing trees. “Explain to me what happened back there,” he said.

“At the meeting?”

Locus nodded.

“Can you be more specific?”

“You revealed our operation to the leaders of a handful of criminal organizations, made a deal with them, and hired a man we know nothing about,” Locus replied bitterly. 

“To be fair, making a deal with them was kind of the plan to begin with,” Fox sighed, changing lanes to pass a pickup that was going below the speed limit. 

“And putting the rest of our team in danger?” Locus asked, looking over at her, frustrated that she didn’t seem to be getting the point. 

“None of those men are  _ ever _ going to see the rest of our team, you can count on that,” Fox said, holding up a finger for emphasis. “I only played that card to corner everyone else in that room.”

“And what happens if they decide we’re a threat?” Locus asked.

_ “Well then they’re going to have to make some friends in high places to figure out who all of you are,” _ Marz replied through the car’s speakers.

“Marz, could you...give us some space, please?” Fox asked.

_ “Sure thing. Sorry to intrude,” _ Marz said, then went silent. 

Fox sighed and ran a hand through her wig. She seemed to realize she was still wearing it a moment later, because she started pulling out bobby pins and sticking them in the cup holder in the middle console. After yanking a few out, she pulled the wig off, set it in her lap, then yanked off the wig cap underneath and shook out her hair. “Fuck, I have a headache,” she groaned. She grabbed the wig and wig cap and tossed both of them into the back seat before putting her hand back on the wheel. 

Locus watched her for a moment, noting the small nodes that made up her facial mesh that had become visible when she took her wig off. “No one on our team deserves to be targeted by those men,” he said after a moment.

Fox side-eyed him, looking surprised. “I agree,” she said. 

“That includes you,” Locus said flatly.

Fox blinked, but kept her eyes on the road. “I’ll be fine.”

“You painted a target on your back tonight. If word gets back to Hargrove that you set those men against him--”

“It’ll be my word against theirs, and Hargrove can’t afford to lose an ally like Emblem,” Fox replied, her voice a little harder than before. “It’ll shake his faith a little bit, I’m sure, but it’ll take more than a couple of second-rate weapons dealers to turn him against me entirely.”

_ Are you confident in that fact, or are you just trying to shut me up? _ Locus thought. 

“What I’m curious about is what it is that’s shaken your trust in me?” Fox asked, glancing over at him. “And how can I earn it back?”

Locus stared at her a moment, then looked away, thinking long and hard about how he wanted to answer, if at all. “You...do things, but don’t explain why, or go into detail about how it will help all of us.”

Fox narrowed her eyes at the road ahead. “Give me an example.”

“Everything that happened tonight,” Locus said, not really sure how to get more specific with it, or really even voice what it was that he wanted to say. This whole conversation was just so frustrating, and he hated that it was happening  _ now. _

“Most of tonight was…improv, I’ll give you that,” Fox said. “Though, we improvise all the time during fights, so I sort of figured...well, I guess I didn’t really think that it could be a problem?”

“It’s…” Locus let out a heavy sigh. How did he want to word this? “Improvising during a fight is different.”

“Does the fact that I’m dealing with people who could do potential damage when I improvise sometimes bother you?” Fox asked. 

_ I don’t know, _ Locus thought, angry at himself for not even being able to figure out his own head. “Just be careful,” he said, a little quieter than he wanted to. And out of the corner of his eye, he could see Fox giving him a strange look, like she wasn’t quite sure how to handle him.

“I’ll...do my best,” she said slowly, turning her eyes back to the road. “Thanks...for talking it out. If it helps, maybe we can talk in detail about...I don’t know, future missions, I guess? We’ll try a few things and see what works.”

Locus didn’t say anything, and looked out the window, wishing her words were enough to make him feel better. And the ugly thing in the back of his mind got up on a chair and mocked him for it.  _ Careful, _ it said.  _ Don’t get familiar. Don’t forget you can’t trust her. She only wants to use you. _ And Locus didn’t have the energy to silence it, so instead he reached out and turned up the volume on the radio to try to drown it out instead.

 

* * *

 

“--Needless to say, it wasn’t a complete success, but Fox believes that they’ll start hearing back from the rest of the attendees in a matter of days. I’ll keep you updated with any changes as the week goes on--”

Wash listened idly, staring at the floor as Kimball shared the information Fox had given her in regards to the meeting she’d had yesterday to him and the rest of the Reds and Blues. It was a bold move, he thought, for her to try to pit Hargrove’s associates against him. It had been the plan right from the start, but Wash couldn’t help but feel the cold vice of anxiety building in his chest knowing that she had jumped right into it headfirst. He hoped she knew what she was doing.

“--Regardless of how everything works out for her and her team, we need to focus on what’s happening on the ground here,” Kimball continued, changing the subject and winning back Wash’s attention. Several days ago, Blue Team and a handful of lieutenants found the remaining two bodies of the soldiers that disappeared. Grey has analyzed the bodies, and a collaboration with Fox has determined that the damage was done with some sort of hard light weapon. Fox has volunteered to discuss her and Grey’s findings with one of her contacts in the biomechanical engineering field, and per Grey’s suggestion, we’ve looked at some satellite imagery of previous hotspots nearby. What we found was this.” Kimball activated the holo-table and pulled up two images that seemed to be infrared satellite pictures of two different landscapes. After staring at the one to his right for a moment, Wash realized he recognized it. It was a top-down view of the Tower of The Purge, or what was left of it. A small blotch of red suddenly came out of the center of the image to the right, and moved quickly out of the frame. A moment later, it appeared at the bottom corner of the image with the tower in it and headed towards the ruins before the time lapse cut off, and reset.

“These are two time lapses of two different sites,” Kimball explained. “The one on my left is the ruins of the Tower of The Purge, and the one on my right is an old abandoned Charon research facility. As you can see, there’s some sort of activity coming from some type of lifeform or life forms.”

“So what yer sayin’ is we missed a few?” Sarge asked.

Wash looked back towards him, noticing the rest of the Reds and Blues doing the same.

“We’re not sure,” Kimball replied, but her voice was tight and exasperated. “Right now, until we get further information, we’re going to treat it like it’s Charon.”

“I take it you’re going to want us to investigate the sites?” Carolina asked, exchanging a knowing look with Wash. 

Kimball nodded. “Like I said, we don’t know if it’s Charon, but given what happened to my men, we need to investigate to be sure. Blue Team, you’re to investigate the research facility. Red Team, I want all of you looking into the Tower of The Purge.”

“Um, is...is that really necessary?” Simmons spoke up.

Wash looked to his left, and Simmons caught his eye, shrinking a little. “We picked up satellite imagery of activity there. If there’s something in the area that might be a threat, we need to check it out.”

“I--W-well I was jus thinking, since you and Carolina destroyed the tower when you fought Locus and Felix...that maybe...I don’t know. It just doesn’t make sense that if it was Charon, that they’d go  _ there. _ There’s nothing  _ left,” _ Simmons explained.

“Not as far as we know,” Carolina replied. “But it’s still worth an investigation.”

Simmons looked like he wanted to say more, but bit his lip and stared at the ground instead.

Wash frowned, looking over when Kimball spoke up. 

“I understand your concern, Captain Simmons, but we  _ need _ to check  _ both _ locations to be  _ certain _ that there is no longer a threat,” she said, then fell silent for a moment, as though waiting for more commentary. When she received none, she closed out of the satellite imagery and continued. “I need all of you to be careful. We still don’t know what caused the deaths of those three men. I need you to be on high alert, and prepare for the worst. I know you can all handle yourselves, but this is something we’ve never seen before. So until we know what we’re up against, treat everything like a potential threat. I can’t afford to lose any of you.”

Hearing that, Wash let his gaze wander to the floor, the weight of the mission they were being sent on settling on his shoulders. He looked to his left, where Tucker and Caboose were standing, feeling his chest tighten a little at the thought of what happened to Mel or Louise or Hodges happening to any of them. He felt a hand on his arm, and looked over to see Carolina. He wondered if the grim expression on her face mirrored the one on his own. “Sarge,” he said, looking over his shoulder at the older man, who met his gaze questioningly. “You and your team stay safe, understand?”

Sarge cracked a grin, but Wash noticed it lacked some of the vim and vinegar it usually contained when the older man found himself facing a threat. “You Blues worry about yerselves. We can handle ourselves just fine!”

“I hope,” Grif muttered next to him.

Wash just sighed and looked back at Kimball, who met his gaze and gave him a nod. “Let’s get moving,” she said, then added “good luck everyone. I hope you won’t need it.”

 

* * *

 

“So let me get this straight; we find three dead guys who got torn up by  _ something, _ and our response is to go out and look for the thing that did it,” Grif said.

Simmons frowned out at the landscape whipping past the Warthog they were in. “I mean, I  _ get _ it. But I wish we had more information about what we’re up against. I-I mean...I never  _ saw _ the bodies, but from what Volleyball told me...it was bad.”

“You two’re getting yerselves all worked up fer nothin’!” Sarge scoffed, looking over his shoulder at where Simmons, Donut, and Lopez were sitting. “We beat those dirty mercs, remember? This’ll be  _ nothin’!” _

_ “Carolina y Washington vencieron a los mercenarios, no a nosotros,”  _ Lopez said.

“Sure Wash and Carolina beat them, but we finished them off!” Donut replied.

“ _ No puedo decir si adivinaste lo que acabo de decir a través de las pistas de contexto, o si realmente entiendes lo que estoy diciendo,”  _ Lopez muttered suspiciously.

“We finished,  _ one _ of them off, and he already had one foot in the grave,” Grif corrected.

“Well yeah, but he still put up a fight!” Sarge replied.

“Y-yeah but...neither Felix or Locus had laser cannons, or whatever it was that Grey said killed Mel,” Simmons spoke up.

“If it makes you feel any better, what we saw on the satellites probably wasn’t even people!” Donut spoke up. “I mean, the other day, I saw a deer-thing on patrol. Animals are coming back to the jungle. Maybe we just saw a herd.”

“Coming out of a Charon research facility and heading to the tower Felix and Locus almost used to kill all of us?” Grif scoffed. “Yeah fuckin’ right.”

Simmons felt his chest clench up, and he looked away. This conversation was only making him feel worse and worse. “I just hope we don’t find anyone.”

_ “Hmph! _ I do! I’ve been itchin’ for a fight!” Sarge exclaimed.

“Even if we do find anyone, it might not be that much of a fight,” Donut suggested. “If there even is one. I mean, if it’s leftover space pirates, they’re probably low on resources anyways.”

Simmons just shut his eyes and turned his head towards the back of the Warthog, wishing he could fast-forward through the day to the part where they all got back to headquarters safe. He watched the ground behind them turn from a dirt trail surrounded by lush jungle to an uneven, craggy landscape as they began descending down a hill. Turning his head towards the front, he found himself staring down into a valley carved out of the rocky landscape, giant red crystals jutting out of the cliffs, appearing to almost glow in the dim sunlight that was choked out by the storm brewing overhead. In the very center of the valley was a massive crater, the rim of which had several large pieces of metal jammed into it, juxtaposed against the crystal formations that peppered the landscape. They had to be in the right place.

Grif pulled the Warthog to a stop at the edge of the cliff, and Simmons found himself standing up in the back of the vehicle to get a better look at the bottom of the crater. It was much shallower than he expected it to be, but still imposing nonetheless. The bottom was littered with red crystals jutting like knives towards the sky mingling with debris from both the tower and the ship that felled it. 

“Wow, y’know, for all the stories that Wash told us about this place, they’re  _ definitely _ not as creepy as the real thing,” Donut spoke up. 

_ “ _ _ Este lugar fue _ **_diseñado_ ** _ para una batalla de jefes,”  _ Lopez breathed.

“No kidding,” Simmons replied, staring wide-eyed under his helmet into the crater. “How the hell did Locus and Felix  _ survive _ that?”

“No clue, but we should’ve asked Locus for some tips before coming here,” Grif grumbled, then turned the wheel and began driving along the crater to find an entry point. It took them a short while to find one, nestled between a large crystal formation and a slab of outward-jutting rock, but after they located it, Grif parked the Warthog and they all gathered at the entrance to the trail that would take them down.

“So...what’s the plan?” Simmons asked.

“Well,” Sarge began, facing the crater and fingering the chin of is helmet as he thought, “that spaceship ain’t a complete wreck. We might be able to find somethin’ in there.” He looked over at Simmons and said “you an’ Grif are gonna check that out, while me, Donut, and Lopez’re gonna look around what’s left of the tower. If you two find anything, give a holler, and we’ll come check it out, and vice-versa. And if you come across any pirates, make sure they ain’t gonna laser you in the face before you shoot em, got it?”

Simmons blinked, opening his mouth to speak, but was cut off by Grif, who said “I can’t  _ believe _ I’m saying this, but this might be the first plan you’ve ever made that makes actual fucking  _ sense.” _

“I’ll have you know that  _ all _ of my plans make sense!” Sarge barked. “You just ain’t smart enough to comprehend them!”

“Uh-huh,” Grif said flatly. He turned, shaking his head and looking out over the crater for a moment. Then he said “anyways, we’ll catch up with you guys later. Let’s go Simmons,” before turning and starting down the trail.

“Uh, r-right!” Simmons exclaimed, hurrying after him. 

“You guys be careful, okay?!” Donut called after them.

Grif just raised a thumbs-up without looking back or stopping in response.

Simmons caught up to him, falling into pace with him as they picked their way through the rubble. Through the thin fog that blanketed the ground, he could make out the dull blue glow of alien machinery.  _ How is that still  _ **_functioning?_ ** He wondered, looking over at Grif, wondering if he’d seen it too. 

“What do you think we’ll find?” Grif asked.

Simmons turned his gaze to what was in front of them, thinking. “Not sure. Maybe some old attack plans from the mercs. A few dead bodies. Stuff like that.”

“Well yeah, but do you think we’ll come across what killed those three guys?”

“I-I don’t know. Why are you asking me? I can’t see the future,” Simmons replied.

Grif shrugged. “You’re the smart one. I just wanted your two cents, is all.”

Under his helmet, Simmons blinked in surprise. He hadn’t been expecting a compliment. “Oh.” He looked away, staring at the ground. “I-I hope we don’t run into it. What killed those soldiers, I mean. I don’t know if we’re ready for something like that.”

Grif made a humming sound and nodded, coming to a stop in front of the wrecked spaceship. Simmons joined him, staring up at its huge black mass. The ship had ruptured in half upon impact, its nose snapped and twisted underneath it. The tail end was jammed up against what was left standing of the tower, almost appearing to have been wrapped around it from the sheer force of its impact. 

“Let’s see if we can get into the control room first,” Grif suggested quietly. 

“Yeah,” Simmons nodded, and allowed him to lead the way towards what was left of the front of the ship. 

It took some scavenging, but they were eventually able to locate a narrow entrance where the ship had twisted in half. Simmons, swallowing hard, holstered his weapon and crawled through first, standing up shakily on the uneven floor before looking back as he heard Grif start to wriggle through. He watched Grif struggle for a moment, squirming and twisting and clawing at the sides of the gap for leverage before he finally gave up and let his arms dangle, saying “I think I’m stuck.”

“Let me help,” Simmons offered, walking over and taking both of Grif’s hands in his. Digging his heels into the ground, he pulled with all his might, feet scrabbling against the floor. “Fuck...I can’t...get you!” he gritted out.

“Well keep trying! I don’t want to be stuck in here like a sitting duck if pirates show up!” Grif exclaimed. 

“I. Know. I’m. Not. Gonna. Let. That.  _ Happen!” _ Simmons exclaimed, bracing a foot against the wall and tugging as hard as he could. 

Two things happened. One, Grif came loose with a comical  _ pop _ sound. Two, Simmons learned about the effects of the transferral of momentum. Both men tumbled down the steep gradient of the floor, landing in a heap against a tangle of metal blocking their path.

“Grif?!” Simmons exclaimed, bolting upright and looking around the second they landed. 

“You’re sitting on me,” Grif replied flatly from beneath him.

Simmons let out a startled yelp and scrambled off of him, rolling to the side and hurrying to his feet to offer Grif a hand.

Grif sat up and waved him away, looking around at their surroundings. “Jesus,” he said, clapping a hand on one knee as he stood. “How’re we gonna find anything in here?”

Simmons looked around at the mangled interior of the ship. “I don’t know. This place is a mess.”

“Yeah,” Grif agreed, looking towards the front of the ship. “Come on,” he said after a moment, stepping past the tangle of metal and wires that had stopped their fall. 

Simmons followed him, bumping into him several times as he lost his footing on their way down towards the helm. They wandered towards their destination in silence, and as they came upon the doors that would take them to the controls of the ship, Simmons found himself holding his breath. 

Grif banged on the sliding doors twice, then turned back to Simmons and said “it’s sealed. We’re gonna have to find a way to pry them open.”

Simmons turned around in a circle, looking for something that they could leverage the doors open with. His eyes fell on a piece of metal that looked like a thick piece of rebar that was twisted flat on one end. Climbing over some rubble, he reached it and gave it a hard tug, pulling it loose. “I got something,” he said, turning to Grif and holding it out to him. 

Grif turned and took it, giving it a once-over before nodding and saying “this might work.” then he returned to the doors and jammed one end of it in.

Simmons slid back down towards him, using his hands to brake before straightening up and wandering over to him. “Can you get it?”

“I just...gotta break the  _ seal,” _ Grif replied with effort. 

Simmons took a step back to give him some space, watching as Grif managed to successfully lodge the rebar between the doors, releasing a hiss of air, only to stop and look over at him.

“I need you on that side,” Grif said, nodding at the door to his right. “You’re gonna pull, I’m gonna leverage. If we can get one door open, the other should go too. Most ships are wired that way.”

“Right!” Simmons said, impressed by Grif’s knowledge, but deciding to save any commentary he had on the matter for a later time. He stuck his fingers into the small gap Grif had made, bracing himself to pull before looking over at Grif to indicate he was ready.

“Alright, three...two...one!” Grif said, and pushed against the rebar with all his might.

Simmons pulled hard, sinking his heels in, feeling as the door slowly but surely slid open. There was the squeak of rusty mechanics, and then a loud click, and Simmons suddenly felt the door’s resistance give out as it slid the rest of the way open. He stumbled back slightly, looking over as Grif tossed the piece of rebar down, more bent than it had been before. 

“So, uh, wanna go in first?” Grif asked after a moment of staring through the door.

Simmons walked over to join him, peering into the darkness. “Can we go in together?”

“Yeah. Good idea,” Grif replied with a nod, then pulled his rifle off his back.

Simmons did the same, and huddled close enough to Grif that they bumped shoulders, took a deep breath, and said “okay, let’s go.”

The helm was unnaturally quiet, even more so than its surroundings, like a crypt that had been unopened for hundreds of years. Simmons felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as he stared at what was left of a control console directly in front of him. Draped across it, dried out and twisted and broken, was a corpse. 

Grif sucked in a breath and said “y’know what? I’m okay with this. As long as he both stays dead, and is the only space pirate we come across, this is fine.”

Simmons looked over at him, biting his lip. “Should we...move him?”

“I’m not fucking touching him,” Grif replied.

“Well I don’t want to either!”

_ “You _ suggested it!”

“Just-- _ Ugh!” _ Simmons turned, holstering his gun, and walked back to the door, picking up the piece of rebar Grif had discarded and wielding it as he made his way over to the corpse. Baring his teeth in a disgusted grimace, he hooked the piece of rebar under the shirt the corpse was wearing and pulled. The corpse tumbled backwards onto the floor at Grif and Simmons’ feet, staring face-up at them with empty eye-sockets and a mouth stiffened into a dry, leathery, permanent yowl.

“Uh. Gross,” Grif said. 

“He looks kinda...mummified,” Simmons pointed out.

“There’s probably like, salt or something in the ground around here,” Grif suggested. “That’s how you dry out a corpse, right?”

“I think so,” Simmons replied quietly. “And the front end of the ship is jammed so deep in the ground that there probably wasn’t a way for moisture to get in,” he added, looking up towards where the windshield  _ should _ have been. “It’s weird, though. He’s not  _ dressed  _ like a pirate,” he continued, looking down at the corpse.

“Maybe he’s the captain?” Grif suggested, looking around. 

Simmons thought for a moment, then said “we should send some photos back to headquarters...and maybe Blue Team.” He crouched down next to the corpse and activated the camera in his helmet. “Keep them in the loop, y’know?”

“Yeah,” Grif replied. “Speaking of which, I wonder if they’ve found anything yet. We haven’t heard from them.”

Simmons took a few photos, sending them to both headquarters and Blue Team before standing. “Well, whatever they’re up to, I’m sure we’ll hear from them after they get those pics.”

Grif nodded. “Well, I hope whatever they have is good news.”

Simmons sighed. “Me too.”

 

* * *

 

Carolina stared at the image that popped up in the corner of her hud, something ugly and bitter and hurt clawing its way up her chest. She choked it down, biting down hard on her lip and tightening her grip on her weapon. 

“Boss?”

Wash. He saw it too. He  _ knew. _

Carolina looked over at him stiffly, maybe a little too suddenly, because he took a step back when she did. 

“Is...Is that who I think it is?” Wash asked hesitantly after a moment, his voice tight.

“I--” The words caught in her chest, and Carolina forced herself to breathe for a moment before she tried to find them again. “I think so.”

“You guys...know him?” Tucker asked, walking over slowly to stand beside Wash. 

“Are...are you sad because he was your friend?” Caboose asked.

Carolina looked over at him, feeling her mouth open to reply, but not hearing any words come out. She grew aware of the stinging in her knuckles, and took another deep breath, loosening her grip on her gun. “No. He...Wash and I knew him from our days in Project Freelancer. His...his name was Aiden Price.”

“Wait,” Tucker said without missing a beat. “Wait, you brought up that name when we were talking about Epsilon with Doctor Grey!”

Carolina looked over at him tiredly, knowing he had already put the pieces together. “Tucker…”

Tucker took a step back, shaking his head. “No. No way. You said he was the only person who might know how to fix the AI fragments. He--he can’t be  _ dead! _ How is that  _ fair?!” _

“It’s not, Tucker. Believe me, we’re all upset too,” Wash said, his voice heavy. 

Tucker looked over at him, and Carolina could see the anger in his shoulders. But then Caboose spoke up and said “you know, Tucker, I don’t think we  _ could _ fix them. I mean, you can’t fix a dead person and make them not dead anymore. Even if it’s sad.”

Carolina didn’t know when Caboose had gotten so wise. “Fox...might be able to help, but...for now, Caboose is right.”

“But they don’t deserve that!” Tucker protested.

“I know,” Carolina replied, irritation cutting through the numbness she felt. “We can talk about what this means for us later, but we need to focus on why we came here,” she snapped, jerking her head in the direction of the research facility in the valley below. 

“You’re right, but we should take a few minutes to process this,” Wash offered. 

Carolina wanted to argue, but found herself lacking the energy to do so, and instead just said “fine.” She stared out over the research facility for a moment, trying to convince herself that she was scanning the area for hostiles instead of dwelling on a past that should have stopped chasing her a long time ago. 

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Wash step up to join her. With a sigh, she said “I...didn’t know he was even still alive.”

“Well...we know from some of the interrogations Grey did that the ship Locus and Felix hijacked was a prison transport vessel,” Wash reasoned. “It makes...sense as to why he was onboard.”

And the ugly thing in Carolina’s chest crawled up her throat and forced her jaws open, and she said “I’m just so  _ fucking _ sick of the Project chasing me wherever I go. Hurting the people I care about. Hurting  _ me. _ I just want it all to be  _ over.” _

And she felt Wash put a hand on her back between her shoulder blades, and it took all of her willpower not to just lean into him in search of some sort of comfort. But they were on a mission, and comfort had to wait, and so she steeled herself and choked her anger down.

“Y’know, Carolina. It might be a really awful game of tag that isn’t really fun and stuff,” Caboose said, drawing Carolina’s attention. “But you’re still winning! And it’s not like you’re all by yourself, because that would be  _ really _ not fun and also kinda sad. But it’s not because you have us, so you don’t have to worry about losing because if you get out then one of us will tag you so you can get back in and keep going and stuff.”

“I think you combined two games together, Caboose,” Wash said quietly.

Carolina let out a long sigh and gave Caboose a nod. “Thank you, Caboose. I...I appreciate it.”

Caboose shrugged. 

“Do you think you’re ready?” Wash asked.

Carolina looked over at him, then up at the clouds roiling overhead, then down at the research facility. “Yeah. Let’s do this.”

 

* * *

 

When they reached the research facility, their first move had been to split up. Wash had taken Caboose to search one end of the building, while Tucker had wound up stuck with Carolina. He was certain Wash had put him with her just to raise the awkwardness levels between both of them. 

As they wandered through the hallways, Tucker spent a good portion of his time mentally kicking himself for how he reacted to the news that Aiden Price was dead. _I’m such a_ ** _jackass,_** he thought, staring at Carolina’s back as she led them through the hall. _She’s upset because of Project Freelancer, and I’m over here making it about me and how I want the AI fragments to be saved and blah blah blah. Fuck. Okay. Say something to her._ “Um...Carolina?”

“I’m sorry,” Carolina sighed, not looking back at him.

Tucker stopped dead in his tracks for a moment before hurrying to catch up to her. “Wait, what?!”

“I said, I’m sorry,” Carolina replied in an even tone that Tucker was sure was forced. “I got upset. I let it affect me. I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.”

Tucker stared at the floor, not sure what to say, and almost bumped into Carolina when she stopped in front of a door. He reoriented himself, clearing his throat, then said “you...don’t have anything to apologize for.”

Carolina, who had been in the middle of trying to figure out how to open the door, stopped and looked over her shoulder at him. “What?”

“I...I made it about me,” Tucker said, looking away. “I got upset about Price being dead because now we can’t help the AI fragments. I didn’t even think about what you were feeling. I...I was a total  _ ass. _ If anything,  _ I _ should be the one apologizing.”

For a moment, Carolina said nothing and just stared at him. Then she took a deep breath and straightened up and said “we’re even.”

“Uh...are you sure?” Tucker asked.

“I’m sure. We both got upset for different reasons. Both make sense. We both apologized for it. We’re even,” Carolina said, then turned back to the door. “Now let’s see what’s on the other side of this thing.” She stepped into its sensor range, holding her gun at the ready as the doors slid open, then crept through.

Tucker did the same, following her into what looked like a control room, based on the holo-table in the middle of it and the monitors on the walls. 

“Clear,” Carolina said, straightening up and holstering her pistol on her hip before walking over to one of the computers. “I’m going to see what I can get off of this computer. You take a look around.”

“Copy that,” Tucker said, turning towards the back wall of the room, eyes on the cables that ran up the side of it. Everything in the room seemed to be in relatively good condition, which meant that either the space pirates that Locus and Felix brought had taken care of it, or someone had moved in recently. 

Frowning, Tucker’s eyes drifted over to the shelves on the other side of the doorway, noting the equipment stacked on them. A lot of it was just cables and computer hardware, but something on the second shelf from the top caught his eye. It was a smaller version of the storage unit Grey had brought out when she had talked to them about the AI fragments before they buried the Meta’s armor. Next to it was an empty space, and standing up on his toes, Tucker could see that there was a small area on the surface of the shelf that had no dust on it. Like something had been there and was moved recently. “Hey Carolina,” he said.

“What is it?”

“Come take a look at this.” Tucker looked over his shoulder and watched as Carolina walked over to join him. “There’s a spot on this shelf with no dust on it. I think there was something there. Maybe another one of those storage units?”

Carolina looked at the dustless spot with her arms crossed. “Someone was definitely here recently,” she mused. “Maybe there’s something on the computer about what was taken…”

Behind them, the computer let out a chirping tone, and Carolina looked back at it, then said “speaking of which,” before walking over.

Tucker joined her, watching as she pulled up a few logs, narrowing his eyes at one that stood out to him.

Apparently, Carolina noticed it too, because she pulled it up and made it full-screen, scanning over it. “It looks like...whoever’s using this facility is interested in downloading information off of alien technology,” she said.

“That sounds an  _ awful _ lot like Charon,” Tucker replied.

Carolina pulled out a data chip and plugged it into the computer, saying “I’m going to pull everything I can off of this. Call Red Team. They’re at a site of alien technology. I want them to know what’s going on.”

Tucker nodded. “Will do,” he said, and opened up a comm channel to contact Red Team.

 

* * *

 

“Buckle up boys, Christmas came early this year!” Sarge exclaimed, looking back towards Donut and Lopez.

“I didn’t!” Donut replied cheerfully.

_ “Los odio a los dos,” _ Lopez said flatly.

“Well, to answer yer question, Lopez, Blue Team dug up some info that there might be some ruffians lookin’ fer alien tech!” Sarge said.

“ _ Eso no era una pregunta, pero gracias por mover la trama hacia adelante,” _ Lopez replied.

“Do you think they’ll come here?” Donut asked, staring up at a part of the tower that was somehow still standing.

Sarge walked over to join him, looking up at the tower. “I sure hope so. I’m itchin’ for an ass-kickin’! But right now, Carolina wants us lookin’ fer some kinda storage unit that the pirates might be usin’ to download information.”

“Huh,” Donut said. “Should we?”

_ “Suena como una manera  _ **_fantástica_ ** _ de hacer que nos maten,” _ Lopez remarked.

“Why thank you, Lopez!” Sarge replied, satisfied by how enthusiastic his teammate sounded about the plan. “Why don’t we start lookin’ for a way into that tower, and see if it’s up in there anywhere?” he suggested, turning and starting to pick his way through the rubble towards the tower.

“Lead the way!” Donut replied behind him as he hurried to catch up.

_ “Esto va a ser estúpido,”  _ Lopez hissed, doing the same.

They climbed through the wreckage, reaching the tower right as the first crackle of thunder echoed through the valley. 

“Huh, well that’s some  _ ominous _ foreshadowing,” Donut commented, looking up at the sky. 

“Do yer worst, Zeus! I ain’t scared of you!” Sarge barked up at the clouds, jumping when another clap of thunder echoed through the crater.

_ “Estamos de pie junto a un montón de piezas gigantes de metal, en medio de una tormenta. Nos vamos a morir,” _ Lopez commented.

“Better idea, why don’t we split up and walk around the tower and see what we can find?” Sarge suggested.

“Y’know I kinda would like to stay with you guys, actually,” Donut said.

Sarge looked back at him, disappointed. “Hmph. Fine. We’ll all search together and be slow,” he grumbled, and began leading them around the tower.

_ “Lento está bien si todos sobrevivimos,” _ Lopez said from behind him.

Sarge ignored him, clambering over a large piece of rubble to get a better view, eyes falling on something dark and black inside of the tower, beyond a wall that had been ripped away. “Looks like there’s somethin’ in there!” he exclaimed, hopping down off of the debris and leading Donut and Lopez over to the tower. “One of you gimme a boost,” he said, looking up at the tower. The thing he had seen was just above them. He just needed a way to reach it. 

“I got it!” Donut offered, holstering his gun and kneeling by the wall with his hands out. 

Grinning under his helmet, Sarge charged and planted a foot in the middle of Donut’s hands, feeling himself get shot up like a rocket. He grabbed onto the edge of the tower, pulling himself up onto flat ground. He rose to his feet, shotgun in his hands, and looked around, spotting the thing on the wall he had seen earlier. He walked over to it, examining it. It definitely didn’t  _ look _ like it belonged there. And it certainly hadn’t been there very long. Sarge looked back towards the edge of the hole where part of the tower had been ripped away, noticing that Lopez had been boosted up behind him, and was leaning over the edge, pulling Donut up after him. “Come get a look at this,” he said.

“Oof! Gimme a sec!” Donut said as Lopez dragged him up to their level. 

Sarge looked back at the storage unit, frowning. “Whaddya make of it?” he asked when he heard Lopez and Donut approach him.

“It’s definitely not alien,” Donut said, coming to a stop at his side. 

_ “Definitivamente es tecnología humana,”  _ Lopez commented.

Sarge squinted at it, leaning in close to get a better look. “Wonder what they’re tryin’ to get outta this tower with it?”

_ “Lo que sea que estén buscando, dudo que lo encuentren. Santa probablemente ya ni siquiera está en esta torre. E incluso si lo fuera, necesitarían hackear los sistemas de la torre para llegar hasta él, y mucho menos descargar cualquier información que pudiera tener,” _ Lopez mused.

Sarge shook his head and looked back at Lopez. “No, no, no.  _ Listen, _ there’s no way Santa’s still in this tower. And if he was, whoever put this storage unit here would have to hack the tower to even reach him!”

_ “Eso es literalmente lo que acabo de decir,”  _ Lopez replied.

“I know I’m right,” Sarge declared. “Now you two watch my six. I’m gonna call this in.”

 

* * *

 

“Agent Washingtub, do you think the mean space pirates are gonna hurt Santa?” Caboose asked. 

“I’m not sure, Caboose,” Wash replied, fidgeting with the digital lock next to the door they were both trying to go through.

Caboose stared up at the sign above the door labelled “armory” and frowned. “I hope they don’t hurt him. He’s our friend. We should do something to help.”

“We are,” Wash said, looking up sharply when the digital lock made a beeping sound, and the doors slid open. He rose to his feet and looked back at Caboose. “Don’t worry about Santa. He’s survived for...a really long time on his own. His odds have only gotten better with us around. If the space pirates are trying to hurt him, anything we can find here at this research facility we’re in can help us stop them.”

_ Ooooh, _ Caboose thought. “So by not helping him, we’re helping him?”

“That’s...right. Sort of,” Wash said, then turned and walked through the door to the armory, his hand on his pistol.

“Helloooooo!” Caboose called out, stepping through the door after him. After a moment, he looked over at Wash, whose shoulders were hunched slightly in surprise, and said “I don’t think there’s anyone in here.”

“Yeah, uh, don’t do that again please. We have to try to be quiet,” Wash said.

“Oh!” Caboose said, in as much of a whisper as he could muster. “Sorry!”

“It’s...fine. Look, why don’t you take a look around to see if there’s anything that might suggest someone was here recently,” Wash suggested.

“Like what?” Caboose asked. Confused. He wasn’t sure how to tell if someone wasn’t there, if people already  _ weren’t _ there, and he hadn’t met anyone in the building to  _ know _ that there was supposed to be someone in the room that they were in. 

“Like, missing weapons?”

“How do I know they’re missing if I didn’t know they were there before?” Caboose asked.

“Just,” Wash sighed. “Just look around, and if you see anything weird, let me know, okay? I’m going to check out that console over there and see if anything was logged.”

“Okay!” Caboose replied.  _ Weird _ he could do. He watched as Wash turned and walked over to the console in the corner of the room, then he looked over and stared at the weapon racks. Not really sure what to look for, he walked alongside them, counting all the guns while tapping his fingers against Freckles’ side. When he reached the end of the rack, he noticed some shelves with ammo boxes on them. But there was something kind of... _ weird  _ too. “Hey Agent Washingtub? I think I found something that looks weird!”

“Hold on, I’m on my way,” Wash said.

Caboose looked over and watched Wash jog to his side, satisfied that he’d found something.

“What is it, Caboose?” Wash asked when he reached him.

Caboose nodded at the shelves. “There’s a lot of dust on this shelf, but there are some squares that aren’t dusty and I think that maybe someone spent a lot of time drawing squares in the dust but I’m not sure why.”

Wash peered at the shelves for a moment, then he turned and looked over at the weapon rack. “Shit,” he said.

“Did I do something wrong?” Caboose asked, suddenly worried that maybe he messed up. He  _ really _ didn’t want to get yelled at.

“No, I-- You did good Caboose. Just...There are missing weapons. Someone was here and someone took them.” Wash stood staring up at the weapons rack for a moment before he turned suddenly on his heel and beelined towards the console. “I’m going to double-check the logs and see if I missed something,” he announced.

Under his helmet, Caboose frowned. “I can help!” he offered, walking over and joining Wash at the console, staring down at the screen. He watched Wash scroll through the logs for a moment, quickly becoming bored. Then an icon on the left side of the screen drew his attention. “Hey Agent Washingtub, there’s a button right there on the screen that I think maybe we can use to find the weapons that went missing?”

Wash froze, still staring at the screen. “Caboose, where?”  
Caboose tapped on the screen over the button, and suddenly a new window popped up with the words “activate chip tracking?” on the screen.

“Good eye, Caboose,” Wash said. “Let’s see if this works.” Hit the “OK” button and both he and Caboose watched as a new window appeared on the screen displaying what looked like some sort of topographical map with three glowing green dots on it.

Caboose squinted at it, noticing that something about where the dots were located seemed familiar. Then it clicked. “Hey Agent Washingtub? I think that maybe those dots are where Red Team are.”

“I’m pulling up the satellite images Kimball showed us now on my hub, hold on,” Wash said quickly. Two seconds later he exclaimed  _ “shit!” _ and turned away from the console with a hand pressed to the side of his helmet as he jumped on comms.

Caboose listened with growing worry as he heard Wash say “Agent Washington to Red Team, you have hostiles in your area!”

 

* * *

 

“So  _ you _ guys found a dead body, and  _ we _ found a weird storage device. I guess we could call this a productive day!” Donut declared. 

“That’s an interesting word to use,” Grif muttered, leaning back against the side of the tower.

Shortly after the discovery of the storage unit, Sarge had detached it from the wall and handed it off to Lopez to hold onto before they all climbed back down to ground level to meet back up with Grif and Simmons. Now that they were all back together, Donut couldn’t help but feel a little relieved. He really didn’t like this place. It gave him the creeps.

“So what’s the plan now?” Simmons asked, looking over at Sarge. “Should we split up and check the perimeter before we go?”

Sarge shook his head. “Uh-Uh. Somethin’ about this don’t feel right. This whole thing was too damned easy.”

Donut blinked and looked over at him, his stomach tightening. “Uh, what do you mean by that, Sarge?”

“I mean who leaves an important piece of equipment like that just layin’ around?” Sarge asked. 

Donut looked over to see Simmons and Grif exchange a glance, feeling worry build in the pit of his stomach. “So what  _ should _ we do?”

“I say we head inside of that tower and see if anyone comes lookin’ for it. Then we jump out, take em’ by surprise, and make them give us some answers!” Sarge replied.

“And if they shoot us?” Grif asked, crossing his arms.

“Suck it up and fight back! We’ve all been shot at before!” Sarge snorted. “Now let’s go. Less chit-chat more movement!” he barked,then turned on his heel and began leading them around the tower.

The others hurried after him, and Donut followed, his eyes drifting up towards the thunderstorm once he had caught up. The wind was starting to pick up, and some of the loose sheets of metal and pieces of rubble groaned from the strength of the downdraft.  _ Eerie, _ Donut thought, looking ahead again to see that not only had he fallen behind, but the rest of his team had crowded around something at the base of the tower. Feet scuffing against the rocky ground, he jogged over to them, packing in next to Simmons to see what everyone else was staring at. 

A piece of the spaceship had been jammed into the bottom of the tower, tearing upwards to create a hole large enough for a person (or several) to fit through it. 

“Alright,” Sarge spoke up from the front of the group, looking over his shoulder at his team, “Grif, you go through first. The rest of us will follow.”

“Why do  _ I  _ have to go through first?” Grif groaned. 

“So if there’re any pirates on the other side, they’ll shoot you first!” Sarge replied. 

“Aw, don’t be a negative Nancy, Grif!” Donut added cheerfully. “Besides, you’ll widen the hole so the rest of us can fit!”

“Exactly,” Sarge agreed with a nod.

Grif looked over at Sarge, then to Donut, then back to Sarge, then huffed “fine. Whatever.” He turned and faced the hole for a moment, not moving, then sighed and said “this fucking  _ sucks,” _ and began climbing through. 

It was a tight squeeze, and Donut found himself cringing as Grif had to wriggle through, but he reached the other side, and after a moment, turned back and said “no bad guys. Come on through.”

Donut waited patiently as the others crawled through the hole, only moving when Lopez gave him a prod between the shoulders to indicate that it was his turn. Donut looked over his shoulder at Lopez and gave him a thumbs up before climbing through, turning and waiting for the last of his teammates to join him before he took a look around.

They were in a dark space dimly lit by the pale blue glow of tall lights embedded in the walls. The floor was mostly untouched, save for a few buckles here and there in the metal. In the middle of the room was a tall cylinder with more blue lights embedded in it emitting a dull, soft hum. Donut watched as Simmons slowly approached it, gun drawn, and asked “is that thing  _ on?” _

Simmons looked back at him and said “well, this thing seems to be putting out some sort of energy. Maybe the tower never had any emergency shutdown protocols, so when the ship hit it, it didn’t know how to respond?”

“Could it still...y’know,  _ kill _ us?” Grif asked, walking over to join Donut.

“Well, if it’s activation is anything like the Tower of Communication’s was...probably not,” Simmons replied. “I mean, the top half of this place is  _ gone.” _

_ “Es la mejor noticia que he oído en todo el día,”  _ Lopez said.

Donut looked over at him, then turned when he heard Sarge say “what are you four lolly-gaggers doin’? We ain’t got time to stand around! Let’s go!”

Donut blinked at him, noting the tall indent in the wall the man was standing next to, and the large, rectangular alien device hovering a few inches off the floor in front of it. “What is that?” he asked.

Sarge shrugged and looked down at it. “Seems to be some kinda elevator.”

“I’m  _ not _ getting on that,” Grif said, crossing his arms.

“Is it  _ safe?” _ Simmons asked, walking over and stopping next to Grif.

“Does it even  _ work?” _ Grif added.

Sarge looked over at them with what Donut could only imagine was a glare and huffed out “alright ya bunch of pansies,  _ look--” _ he stepped up onto the rectangular device, spreading his arms out wide, shotgun in one hand, for emphasis “--see? It’s  _ completely _ safe--” He cut off when the rectangle suddenly let out a chirping sound, and the lights around the edge of it glowed bright. There was a whir as a tube of plasma energy formed around the device, and Sarge looked over at the rest of his teammates and said “uh-oh,” before he and the thing he was standing on shot up through a hole in the ceiling. 

“Um,” Donut said, doing his absolute best to process what had just happened, and still coming up short.

_ “Sarge!” _ Simmons cried. 

“Well, shit,” Grif muttered.

_ “Por fin,” _ Lopez said.

“Do you think he’s dead?” Donut asked, looking at his teammates.

“I hope so,” Grif huffed.

“I’m okay!” Sarge’s voice called down the tube. 

“Damnit,” Grif said.

“I’m sendin’ this elevator thingy back down to ya! Get on and get up here!” Sarge yelled.

“Okay!” Donut exclaimed, bounding towards the tube, looking up as the elevator descended down it towards them.

“This is so stupid,” Grif muttered, coming up beside him.

“Aw, don’t have that attitude, Grif!” Donut chimed. “It’s an adventure! Enjoy it!”

“I’d enjoy a nap  _ way _ more,” Grif replied.

“I’m curious how the aliens managed to makes this thing float like this,” Simmons said, walking over with Lopez on his heels.

Donut watched as the elevator came to a stop at their feet, then hopped on, exclaiming “first!” The others joined him, and the moment the last of them had stepped on, the elevator shot off, passing several other floors and stopping when it reached the level Sarge was on.

“Well that was fun!” Donut said cheerfully, stepping off and spinning around to get a good look at the room they were in. It was a large, geometric space with large support beams decorated with glowing lights reaching up towards the ceiling, and some sort of machinery forming a square, mid-waist-high wall with breaks in every corner in the middle of the floor. The ceiling had buckled in, and parts of it were missing, pieces of the spaceship jammed through it. Above, Donut could see the sky, and realized that the elevator had likely taken them to what was now the top of the tower. Donut looked back at the rest of his team, watching as they walked over to join him.

“Alright, let’s move forward,” Sarge said, nodding ahead.

“Are we gonna explore this  _ entire _ tower?!” Grif moaned.

“Leave no stone unturned, Grif! We never know what we’ll find!” Sarge replied, brushing past Donut to lead the way.

Donut just gave Grif a shrug, and turned to follow Sarge. As they walked past the machinery, Donut let his eyes wander over it, wondering what it controlled, only to stumble and nearly topple over when he ran into Sarge, who had stopped abruptly right at the end of the wall. “Sarge, what--”

_ “Shh!” _ Sarge hissed, and pointed ahead.

Donut followed his finger and found himself staring at three men walking through a door on the other side of the room. Donut opened his mouth to ask what they were going to do, but was interrupted when Grif ran into him from behind.

“Ow!  _ Shit,  _ Donut!” Grif exclaimed, shaking his head, and drawing the attention of the three men on the other side of the room.

“Damnit, Grif!” Sarge hissed, then turned and grabbed Donut’s arm, dragging him through one of the corner breaks and behind cover.

Donut glanced over, trying to shake his startlement, as the rest of his team crouched down next to him and Sarge.  

“Who’s out there?!” The tallest of the three men called out.

“What do we do?” Simmons asked, his voice wobbly with panic.

“Shut up and stay calm. I’ve got this,” Sarge replied. Then he stood, turned, and stepped out from behind cover, gun raised. 

Donut bit his lip, from what he could see, the men were armed, but didn’t appear to be hostile, and didn’t seem at all perturbed by the fact that Sarge was now pointing a gun at them. 

“Hey now! No need to shoot! We’re just passing through,” said the medium-sized one. 

“I don’t like this,” Simmons said, exchanging a look with Donut.

“I don’t either,” Donut admitted, then sucked in a breath, stood, and stepped out from behind cover to join Sarge, hearing the sound of footsteps behind him as the rest of his team joined him.

“What did I  _ say?” _ Sarge gritted out over comms.

Donut just shrugged.

“Which of you’s in charge?” Sarge asked.

“That would be me,” the medium-sized one replied, raising a hand.

“And who are  _ you _ guys, exactly?” Grif asked, nodding at the men.

The three exchanged looks, and the shortest one said “uh…”

“We’re a travelling improv group,” the leader replied quickly. 

“Y’know I don’t think he’s telling the truth,” Donut said quietly, leaning towards Simmons, eyes still on the men in front of them.

“Why?” Simmons asked.

“Because  _ none _ of them are setting off my gaydar.”

Simmons jerked back, looking at Donut in confusion. “What does  _ that _ have to do with anything?” he asked.

Donut stared at him for a moment, then said “you really don’t know  _ anything _ about theater, do you Simmons?”

“A- _ HEM!” _ the leader said.

“So if yer an improv group, then what’s yer specialty?” Sarge asked.

The tallest of the three let out a chuckle. “Fight scenes,” he replied, and raised his weapon.

“I fucking  _ called _ it!” Donut exclaimed, right before Simmons grabbed his arm and yanked him behind cover. 

“Sonuvabitch!” Sarge hissed, diving behind a fallen support beam with Lopez on his heels.

“Sarge, goddamnit, this is  _ your _ fault!!” Grif yelled over comms next to Donut.

“We should put a call through to Blue Team for backup!” Simmons exclaimed over the sounds of gunfire. 

“On it!” Grif replied, putting a hand to the side of his helmet. A few seconds passed, then Grif let out a sudden hiss and jerked his hand away. “Fuck, I can’t get  _ through!” _

“Oh I’m sorry, were you trying to make a phone call?” the leader chuckled. “I’m afraid you’ll have to hang up and try again  _ later.” _

Holding his breath, Donut leaned out from behind cover just enough to see where the leader was standing. He was a few meters away, and the other two were a little ways behind him, weapons still pointed towards their cover. The short one looked over at him sharply, and raised his weapon to fire, but Donut was already back behind cover by the time he shot off the round. “Guys, I think they’re jamming our signal,” he said.

“No  _ shit, _ Sherlock!” Grif snapped.

“With  _ what _ though? I don’t see a jammer anywhere!” Simmons exclaimed. 

“Look, don’t you worry about it!” Sarge shouted back to them. “Lopez’ll just use his magic robot powers to get out signal back!”

_ “Así no es como funciona,”  _ Lopez replied.

_ I’m no mechanic, but I  _ **_don’t_ ** _ think that’s how that works, _ Donut thought, opening his mouth to voice this, but shut it when a flicker of lightning overhead drew his eyes upward. Overhead, a part of the spaceship protruded through the wall, directly over where the three pirates were standing.  _ If I could just get up there, I might be able to take them out, _ Donut thought, narrowing his eyes. “Hold on a sec,” he said, turning and creeping back the way they’d come.

“Where--?” Simmons began to ask, turning to look after him.

“Just trust me!” Donut replied, then turned the corner. Ahead was a tangled mass of rubble that built up to the piece of spaceship. It looked unstable, but it was the best Donut had available, so, sucking in a breath, he darted out from behind the square of machinery towards it, sliding behind a large chunk of the wall that had come down before anyone noticed him. Breathing hard, adrenaline flooding his veins, he holstered his battle rifle on his back and began climbing on all fours up the rubble. The sound of Sarge shouting curses drew his attention, and looked over towards where the man was taking cover, losing his footing the second he did so and winding up plunging his arm into a gap between two sheets of metal. “Fuck,” he hissed, giving it a few hard tugs to get it loose before continuing his ascent, rising to his feet when he reached the top. 

There was about a meter of space between the top of the rubble pile and the piece of spaceship. Donut stared at it for a moment, trying to do the math to figure out whether or not he could make that jump, then looked down at the slab of wall he was standing on. “Welp, might as well try, and cry about a broken neck later,” he chuckled nervously to himself, then charged, leaping off the edge of the slab of wall and lunging at the piece of the ship. His chest hit the edge of it, and his hands scrabbled for purchase, managing to grab onto a piece of protruding sheet metal. Grunting with the effort, he pulled himself up, praying no one had noticed him yet. 

Keeping low, he crept along the piece of the ship, pulling a couple of sticky bombs off of his hip. When he reached the edge, he looked down. The pirates were directly below him, walking slowly towards where the rest of his team had taken cover.  _ Alright, it’s now or never, Donut, _ Donut thought, activating the sticky bombs and jumping off the edge.

He landed dead in the middle of the three, rolling with the momentum and coming up on a knee, throwing a sticky bomb at the two pirates at the front, before rolling backwards between their leader’s legs and slapping the last one on his back before turning and bolting for cover, hitting the button on the detonator as he did so.

There was a yell, followed by two loud bangs that echoed through the space. Donut peered out from behind cover, eyes falling on the huge cloud of bluish smoke that was pouring from the detonation site. “Everyone okay?” he asked his team experimentally over comms. 

“Donut, I don’t know  _ what _ you did, but it worked,” Grif replied, sounding genuinely impressed.

Donut grinned and stepped out from behind cover with his hands on his hips, looking proudly over his handiwork. He shifted his weight, popping a hip, and pointing finger guns at the billowing puff of smoke, saying “guess you losers went out with a  _ bang!”  _ His enthusiasm didn’t last long, as a crackle of thunder directly overhead made him jump with a yelp.

The storm winds began to pick up, bringing a light drizzle of rain with them, and the smoke was pushed away, wrapping around three forms that had now turned to give Donut their undivided attention.

“Tough luck, bud,” the leader said in an amused growl, a flash of lightning glinting off his red visor, his two companions stepping up beside him with their weapons pointed at Donut. “Tell me you’ve got something better than that planned for your next move.”

Donut swallowed hard, eyes darting to where he could see his teammates peering out anxiously from behind cover. Sucking in a shaky breath, he raised a hand to the side of his helmet, opening the channel to reach Blue Team and said “um, help?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dragomir’s name is pronounced Dra-ho-meer, btw. It’s a Slavic surname meaning “to whom peace is precious.” Irony.  
> Thank you Lopez for calling out my inability to stay on track when it comes to writing with Sarge’s perspective. You’re an angel. 
> 
> Careful, Locus, you’re gonna make Fox think you care about her. 
> 
> Lopez-isms of this chapter:  
> \- "Carolina and Wash beat the mercs, not us."  
> \- "I can't tell if you guessed what I just said through context clues, or if you actually understand what I'm saying."  
> -"This place was DESIGNED for a boss battle."  
> \- "I hate both of you."  
> \- "That wasn't a question, but thank you for moving the plot forward."  
> \- "That sounds like a FANTASTIC way to get us all killed."  
> \- "This is going to be stupid."  
> \- "We are standing next to a bunch of giant pieces of metal, in the middle of a thunderstorm. We're going to die."  
> \- "Slow is fine as long as we survive."  
> \- "It's definitely human technology."  
> \- "Whatever they're looking for, I doubt they'll find it. Santa probably isn't even in this tower anymore. And even if he was, they would need to hack the tower's systems to even get to him, let alone download any information he might have."  
> \- "That's literally what I just said."  
> \- "That's the best news I've heard all day."  
> \- "Good riddance."  
> \- "That's not how that works."
> 
> Fun fact, I bullshitted so much of the Hell Trio's armor skins, because a lot of the ones that are cannon to the Halo universe suck.


End file.
